Travel in time and space! Come and meet a cool 1960s girl in a mini-dress in Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris studio (in a Watermill bedroom!)  

Picture Lois Breckon

What would Fra Angelico, the Dominican friar best known for his sensitive frescoes in the monks’ cells in the monastery of San Marco in Florence, have made of this 1960s teenager gazing at us coolly from a picture in the Watermill bedroom named after him?

The girl in a mini-dress looks out at us from a watercolour made by a friend of ours, David Jones. It’s time-travelling conceit, as she is sitting in the 19^th century studio of the Impressionist painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The background to David’s painting is based on an 1890s photograph of the Parisian studio by Toulouse-Lautrec’s friend, Maurice Guibert.

Maurice Guibert 1890, Toulouse-Lautrec peignant au Moulin Rouge, la danse. Bibliothèque National de France, Paris.

The self-assured girl in the picture the top of this story was painted by David in the 1960s, I guess. I can’t remember whether I bought it or it was a gift, for David was always generous with his work and his time. We spent many hours discussing art and the meaning of life in the Chelsea Arts Club.

I was talking recently to his sister, Caroline Hopkins, who told me to ‘hang onto it,’ as David is now a celebrated contemporary artist, with work in the Tate Modern and the Victoria and Albert and many other museums and galleries. See his website at https://www.davidrhysjones.com/

Toulouse-Lautrec and his young companion are part of the entertaining artistic ambience of the Watermill: there are original artworks everywhere, in both the communal rooms and the bedrooms…