A rare quality photograph of the interior of an art studio at the Fleur-de-Lys Studios (1885) in Providence, which features in Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”. Big sharp version here, and some more pictures here.
Wilfred Israel Duphiney painting Commodore John Barry. You just know someone’s going to Photoshop Lovecraft’s face on the portrait in this picture… 🙂
The place housed artists’ studios for masters — many of whom were associated with the Rhode Island School of Design. It or adjacent buildings seem to have also served as a rooming house for students of a creative bent. The complex seems to have been what would now be termed a ‘live-work creative hub’?
It is sometimes also called Fleur-de-Lis is the art history literature. Designed by Charles Walter Stetson and Sydney Richmond Burleigh in collaboration with architects Stone, Carpenter, and Willson (who also built the Providence Public Library).
Incidentally, there’s a 2009 book “Infinite Radius”: Founding Rhode Island School of Design
* rare archival photographs
* previously unpublished manuscripts
* Elsie Bronson’s unpublished chronicle of RISD’s first 50 years
* transcriptions of archival letters
* facsimiles of course & museum catalogues from 1877–1900