an arty little mini-break

farleys, home of the surrealists, and monks house, home of the woolfs

Hi, hello there! Today's edition is a bit different (and longer than normal for a Thursday) as I went away for a few days last week and I want to share a bit about two lovely places I visited: Virginia Woolf's Monks House and Farleys, home to Lee Miller, Roland Penrose and also this kitchen, with its casual Picasso tile on the splashback:

Miller and Penrose played host to visitors including Picasso, Saul Steinberg, Dorothea Tanning, Man Ray, Joan Miró and Leonora Carrington whilst they lived at Farleys. Much like Charleston, nearby home to the Bloomsbury set, the interior is richly decorated with hand-painted designs throughout. Sadly, I'm a dick and left it too late to book a house tour, so didn’t get to see the aforementioned tile, or any of the rest of the decor, in person. Please learn from my mistake and book at least a good few weeks in advance if you plan to visit 🙃. I would dearly love to see inside, (it would make this “guide” more informative, wouldn't it!) so hopefully I will get to make a return visit one day. However, the garden, whilst fairly small, has a bunch of fascinating sculptures, and the galleries have lots of Lee’s amazing photos. The gallery space also hosts rotating exhibitions by other artists, and I was super pleased to visit during Susanne Du Toit’s Painting Women Writers show - highly reminiscent of Alice Neel's portraits, rich with life, colour and, best of all, pets!

pets stealing the show for me in painting women writers by susanne du toit

The garden and gallery ticket also gives you access to the cafe, where they serve salads and baked goods cooked from Lee Miller's own cookbook, which is a neat touch.

I really have a thing for sculpture gardens and this one was a goody.

i was shamefully bad at recording titles and artists here, but this one was called anger, restrained which i love and is such a good example of a title and an abstract piece working beautifully together. it’s by peter brooke-ball

My favourite part, though, was an exhibition currently on show called Love Letters Bound in Gold Handcuffs, a collection of photographs and artefacts from the pre-WWII period when Miller and Penrose were, as the woman who greeted us said, “courting”. When they first met, Lee was married and living with her Egyptian husband in Cairo; when they couldn't be together during this period, Roland said one of the things he missed the most was Lee’s sense of humour.

“I miss all the time, your way of making every moment we spent together new and significant, your abandon, your affection, your sense of humour.” 🤍

You can see absolutely what he means in these photos from the show, which were my favourites precisely because of how they capture Lee's personality. Wish I could have been friends with her!

this photo was taken by lee of mary anita loos and robin fedden. apparently, fedden wrote about skiing, and this is believed to be the possible inspiration behind lee’s idea to get them skiing on the sandy slopes of egypt. the skis didn’t work on sand and they were also disrupted by a venomous asp

lee, who caught me in her cup of gold, roland

I feel bad that these photos are of Lee, rather than by her, but her spirit is so extraordinary. As I was finishing this newsletter up yesterday afternoon, my amazing dad surprised me with a beautiful book of Lee's photos 🤍 They cover a range of places and subjects; those taken during the Second World War are sometimes incredibly hard to look at. And it made me wonder if she managed to keep her sense of fun and love of life after witnessing these horrors. Tragically but unsurprisingly, in the introduction to the book Anthony Penrose suggests to some extent not. He writes that her post-war work was altered by these experiences, with the surrealist touches common pre-war becoming almost entirely absent. She suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and post-natal depression. However, in the foreword to the book, Kate Winslet (who plays Lee in a soon-to-be-released movie of her life) writes about just that spirit that shines out above. And I just love this opening sentence of Kate’s:

“There are so many stories of girls to whom things happened. Lee Miller was a woman who made things happen. I don't mind admitting I adore her.”

🤍🤍🤍

Farleys, Chiddingly nr Lewes, East Sussex, is open Thursdays and Sundays, April til October. House visits are by guided tour only (book in advance!) Garden and gallery tickets cost £10 and should probably also be booked in advance. The Lee Miller's Portraits and the Painting Women Writers exhibitions both finish this Sunday, annoyingly, but Love Letters Bound in Gold Handcuffs, which is much bigger, is on until 29th October.

Monks House is around 30 minutes drive from Farleys, making them ideal to combine on the same day (see below for important info on this). We managed to miss the rain at Farleys in the morning, but weren’t so lucky later on — a lightning storm erupted whilst we were half way round Monks House and we had to make a mad dash through the garden in an absolute downpour… However, it was still such a pleasure to view the (small but beautiful and interesting) house I've read so much about in Woolf biographies. In Joanna Biggs’ book A Life of One’s Own, she writes about visiting Monks House and being disappointed by Virginia's writing lodge in its current incarnation under the National Trust. Her actual writing area is behind glass, which is a bit of a shame, but the real problem for me was the fact that about 10 people had crowded into the little viewing space to shelter from the rain 🤦🏼‍♀️ I would like to go back in the sunshine, to actually be able to appreciate the beautiful garden and see the writing lodge when it's not crowded with bored soggy teenagers.

I won't bore you with all my photos, but wanted to share a few that highlight some of the interesting stories the guides told us.

these chairs, along with a number of other decorated pieces of furniture and artworks, are designed by vanessa bell. the woolfs were earning well from their writing, and the hogarth press, and supported bell by commissioning her to create pieces for their home. these chairs have vanessa’s inititals on the backs

a needlepoint fireplace screen designed by duncan grant and made by his mum

the fireplace tiles and art above the mantel in virginia’s bedroom were painted by vanessa bell. the lamp was made and painted by duncan grant. virginia slept always with a notebook next to her bed, and when her housekeeper brought her breakfast in the mornings she always wondered how she found time to sleep with the amount of writing that took place overnight

outside virginia woolf’s bedroom

basically just to say i want this bedroom. a cow once popped its head through this window, apparently, whilst virginia was in bed, and she was delighted by it!

Monks House, Rodmell nr Lewes, is owned by the National Trust and is open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays (so if you want to do both of the places I went to, Thursday is your day!) Tickets are released every Thursday for the following four weeks and you book a half hour time slot for the house. It's small but so charming and the guides in each room are super informative and nice.

Hope this has inspired you to visit yourself! Back to the normal ‘short notes’ format next week, and see you Sunday for ‘artist note’ #13.