Bedford Park’s artistic community: 150th anniversary exhibition

To mark Bedford Park’s 150th anniversary in 2025, members of The Bedford Park Society carried out new research on the suburb’s history which they made into  a special exhibition. ‘Their labours were particularly fruitful when it came to researching the artistic community which contributed to the Arts and Crafts movement around the turn of the century’ writes Bridget Osborne in The Chiswick Calendar report on the Exhibition and its researchers.


‘When they came to put the exhibition together, they found 75% of the pictures they used – paintings, illustrations and early photographs of the suburb – were newly discovered during the course of their research, or at least their connection to Bedford Park was newly discovered. Edmund Blair Leighton’s painting September is a case in point. It was “hiding in plain sight in a Newcastle gallery,” said the curator Nicholas Bueno de Mesquita, “but unless you find out a little bit about the artist you wouldn’t make the connection”.


‘The clues were the Dutch gable in the picture and the fact that Edmund Blair Leighton was one of the earliest residents of Bedford Park. “His house was about 20 yards from an orchard,” and the new development was surrounded by orchards when it was built.’
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TW427052 September, 1915 (oil on panel) by Leighton, Edmund Blair (1853-1922); 25.1×35.5 cm; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK; (add.info.: Edmund Blair Leighton painted many pictures of graceful young women in landscape settings. This view shows rural life as reassuringly unchanging. This is partly conveyed by the glimpse of an old house over the trees. The attractive pink and lilac colours of the women’s dresses are enhanced by the rich greens of the cottage garden around them;); North East Museums.

Read more: Bedford Park seeks researchers to take it into the digital age: The Chiswick Calendar

Portrait of the artist Edmund Blair Leighton (1852–1922), in his studio in Priory Avenue 1913 – Reginald Haines. His work is associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Photo courtesy of The Bedford Park Society/The Chiswick Calendar.
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