The Lost Bohemians
ON A TREE-LINED STREET IN KENSINGTON, set back from the manicured houses of the uberrich, you will find Antony Bream’s studio. The hall is dark and smells of turpentine. Out of the gloom, a wide stone staircase leads up to the second-floor dwelling with a lavatory adjacent to the front door. Inside, tall north-facing windows let in the grey London light and reveal stacks of canvases piled against the sides of the room. Several huge easels as big as men loom near a gas heater, and a podium set up for models occupies much of the floor. Beyond the main room lies a galley kitchen and down a set of stairs, a bedroom with a bath in it and a large wooden stick for stirring the laundry. Bohemia, often described as a country of the mind, surely positions itself here where idea and place coincide.
