Jan and Cora Gordon: London Places

Wandering through London the other week I stepped off the tube at Notting Hill Gate and walked to Clanricarde Gardens, where Jan and Cora Gordon lived after their return from France in 1932. Jan Gordon died here in 1944. My father visited the flat shortly after Cora's death in 1950.




This is what the exterior looks like in July 2014, number 48 to the left, number 50 to the right.
Clanricarde Gardens, W2, numbers 48 (48D was their residence after the war) and 50 (50C was their residence before the war).


Views of the interior are shown in the following fine painting by Cora J. Gordon and also in "The London Roundabout", published in 1933.

Jan Gordon at work in the Gordons' Clanricarde Gardens flat. The significance of the orange cat is discussed here.


A short amble to the east from Clanricarde Gardens takes the walker first to Kensington Gardens and then Hyde Park, where Cora J. Gordon was a regular at Speaker's Corner, making numerous pen drawings of the assembled characters there. Her Hyde Park activities are described in both "The London Roundabout" and "A Step-Ladder to Painting."

Italian Gardens at the end of "The Long Water" in Kensington Gardens, a short walk from the Gordons' Clanricarde Gardens residence.


There were no speakers in action on the day I walked past.


This was a very enjoyable stroll in the local haunts of the Gordons during their London years in the 1930s and 1940s. They created numerous works of art in this small area and, from the flat, wrote books and articles about art, together with three novels.





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