13/09/2026
Hepworth and Nicholson: The Hampstead Studio Photographs Courtauld is a great companion to the recent Hepworth in Colour exhibition.
It brings together a remarkable group of photographs of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson’s shared London studio at 7 The Mall, Hampstead, taken in the early 1930s by the fine art photographer Paul Laib
The photographs, which are held in the Courtauld’s collection, are among the most evocative and iconic studio images taken in Britain during the 20th century. As well as portraits and exquisite photographs of individual artworks, the images show their studio populated with sculptures, paintings and prints, carefully arranged side by side with carving tools, plants and other objects.
This display offers a captivating insight into Hepworth and Nicholson’s London studio environment, which they occupied until moving to Cornwall in 1939, and which was the setting for a period of intense collaboration and experimentation for the two artists.
In Hampstead, their community of artists included pre-eminent figures of international modernism such as Naum Gabo, László Moholy Nagy, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore and Paul Nash, some of whom had fled fascism on the continent. Herbert Read, one of the leading advocates of modern art in 20th century Britain and a resident of 3 The Mall, would later recall this group as a ‘”nest” of gentle artists’, united by a ‘vital intimacy and enthusiasm’.
The years spent at The Mall were a period of intense collaboration and experimentation for the artists. Nicholson stated in 1932, ‘we can live, think & work & move & stay still together as if we were one person’.
Th display also shines new light on Paul Laib, who photographed the work of many eminent British artists in the first half of the twentieth century.