Smell the turpentine
A PARTICULAR atmosphere haunts places where artists have lived and created—it can be felt powerfully even by those who are not themselves artists. It lingers in places that have been remodelled, as well as those that have become museums or shrines to their creators, such as Leighton House and the other, only slightly less magnificent, palaces of eminent Victorian painters around Holland Park. I hope that James McBey’s Notting Hill studio has not been exorcised; when I visited, it
