Famous Artists' and Writers' Workspaces: 38 Studios and Desks

In this article · 6 sections

1. Painters and sculptors in their studios
2. Novelists, poets and playwrights at their desks
3. Illustrators, cartoonists and book designers
4. Food writers, designers and musicians
5. What these workspaces have in common
6. Visiting the rooms that survive

Where did famous artists and writers actually work? Mostly in rooms far less glamorous than their reputations suggest: a garden shed, a converted barn, a dining table, a crowded spare bedroom. The photographs gathered here show the studios, desks and writing huts of painters, novelists, poets, illustrators and designers, from Jane Austen's tiny table in Hampshire to Will Self's wall of sticky notes in London.

Several of these rooms survive as museums you can visit today, including Virginia Woolf's garden lodge, George Bernard Shaw's revolving hut, Mark Twain's billiard room and Francis Bacon's entire studio, which was moved from London to Dublin. Others were snapshots of working life that have since changed or disappeared.

Above, Pablo Picasso stands in the high-ceilinged salon he turned into a studio. The ornate plasterwork and tall windows appear to be those of La Californie, the villa in Cannes he bought in the mid-1950s, where finished canvases, ceramics and sculptures were left wherever there was floor space.

The captions below say who each person was, what the room tells us and, where known, what happened to it. A few attributions in the original collection could not be checked against a named photographer; where details are uncertain, the caption says so.

Painters and sculptors in their studios

Georgia O'Keeffe moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949, and her studios there were famously spare: white walls, wooden floors, a simple easel and plenty of light. The bare room matches her paintings, which strip desert bones, hills and flowers down to essential shapes. Her Abiquiú home and studio are now cared for by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and can be toured by appointment.

Alexander Calder, the American sculptor who invented the mobile, worked surrounded by wire, sheet metal and half-finished pieces hanging from the rafters. This black-and-white shot, probably of his studio in Roxbury, Connecticut, shows how cluttered a sculptor's space becomes when every object might turn into material. Mobiles hang overhead like a second ceiling.

Willem de Kooning, the Dutch-born Abstract Expressionist, designed his own large studio in Springs, East Hampton, on Long Island, and worked there from the 1960s. The picture shows his late, brightly coloured canvases propped along the walls and a floor covered in paint pots and supplies. Its high ceilings and big windows were built for the scale of his work.

Joan Miró's studio in Palma de Mallorca was designed by his friend, the Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert, and completed in 1956. Miró pinned small objects, postcards and found shapes to the wall as visual prompts, and the room is preserved today as part of the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró. The worn wooden table and scattered sketchbooks show a working space rather than a showroom.

A second view of Picasso in the same grand room, arms folded, surrounded by his paintings and a large painted ceramic vase. Picasso produced thousands of ceramics after the late 1940s, many made with the Madoura pottery in Vallauris, and examples are visible on the floor. He was famous for never tidying, simply moving to a new room or house when one filled up.

Marc Chagall, the Belarusian-born French painter, sits among brushes, paint boxes and a vase of flowers with one of his colourful compositions behind him. Chagall spent his last decades in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France, and this photograph probably dates from that period. The flowers, a frequent motif in his paintings, sit just a few steps from the easel.

Paul Cézanne built his studio on the Lauves hill above Aix-en-Provence in 1901–1902 and worked there until his death in 1906. The tall north-facing window gave him steady light, and the shelves still hold the jugs, skulls and fruit bowls that appear in his still lifes. The Atelier de Cézanne is open to visitors and has been kept close to how he left it.

David Hockney's long, high studio is lined with spotlights, with a vast landscape painting on the end wall that appears to be one of his Grand Canyon works from the late 1990s. Hockney has always worked big and fast, and later moved happily from paint to photo collages, iPhone and iPad drawings. The space is organised like a stage, with the work itself as the backdrop.

Francis Bacon's studio at 7 Reece Mews in South Kensington, London, where he worked from 1961 until his death in 1992, was famously chaotic: piles of photographs, torn books, brushes and paint smeared on the walls and door. In 1998 the entire room was dismantled, every item was catalogued, and it was rebuilt at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, where it opened to the public in 2001. Bacon said the chaos suggested images to him.

Jackson Pollock bends over a canvas laid flat on the floor of the barn studio in Springs, East Hampton, where he and Lee Krasner moved in 1945. Pollock began working in the barn in 1946, pouring and dripping paint from all sides. Conservators later found the original floor under later boards, still covered in his stray drips, and the Pollock-Krasner House and Studio is now run by Stony Brook University.

Mark Rothko sits in an Adirondack chair, looking at two large dark canvases, in what appears to be his New York studio of the 1960s, a former carriage house on East 69th Street. Rothko often spent far longer looking at a painting than applying paint, and he controlled the light carefully. The canvases here resemble the deep maroon and black works he made for what became the Rothko Chapel in Houston.

Novelists, poets and playwrights at their desks

E.B. White, author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little and co-author of The Elements of Style, types at a plain table in the boathouse of his farm in Brooklin, Maine. The room held little more than the table, a bench, a barrel for waste paper and a window onto the water. White liked to keep distractions to a minimum, and this view shows it.

Roald Dahl wrote his best-known children's books in a small brick hut at the bottom of the garden of Gipsy House in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. He sat in an old armchair with a board across his lap, used yellow legal pads and pencils, and kept odd souvenirs within reach. The hut's interior is now displayed at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in the village, which opened in 2005.

Martin Amis (1949–2023), author of Money and London Fields, worked in this bright room under a glass roof, with a desk, an armchair and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The photograph appears to come from a newspaper series on writers' rooms. Amis wrote by hand before typing, and the desk is crowded with paper.

Virginia Woolf's writing lodge stood at the bottom of the garden at Monk's House in Rodmell, East Sussex, which she and Leonard Woolf bought in 1919. Many of her novels took shape there, including Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. The house and lodge are now run by the National Trust, and the open doors here look straight out onto the garden.

Susan Sontag, the American essayist, novelist and filmmaker behind On Photography and Against Interpretation, sits at a desk heaped with papers, books and a rotary telephone. Behind her hangs a vintage Olivetti typewriter poster. Sontag owned a large personal library and wrote her drafts slowly, often by hand.

John Updike, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, reads at a desk surrounded by bookshelves and stacks of paper. Updike was famously disciplined, writing a set number of pages every morning, which helps explain how he published more than sixty books. The room is quiet and practical rather than decorative.

Colm Tóibín, the Irish novelist known for Brooklyn and The Master, works at a long wooden table under walls of books. Like the Amis room above, this image appears to come from a newspaper series photographing authors' workspaces. A blue-and-white lamp and a rug add colour to an otherwise book-filled room.

William F. Buckley Jr., who founded the conservative magazine National Review in 1955 and hosted the TV debate show Firing Line, is seen here at work in a room buried in books, files and equipment. Buckley was a prolific author of columns, novels and nonfiction, and his office reflected that output. He died in 2008.

This dining room at Haworth Parsonage in West Yorkshire is where Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë wrote, often walking around the table in the evenings while reading their drafts aloud, according to accounts from family friends. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey all came out of this house in 1847. The parsonage has been a museum run by the Brontë Society since 1928.

Will Self's writing room became famous for its walls covered in yellow sticky notes, each holding a phrase, idea or plot point for a novel in progress. Self, the author of Great Apes and Umbrella, has written his drafts on a manual typewriter, and his room featured in The Guardian's Writers' Rooms series in 2007; photographer Phil Grey also documented it in a 71-frame panorama. The London street map pinned over the window hints at the city that runs through much of his work.

Anne Sexton, who won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Live or Die, sits in front of shelves of books at her home in Weston, Massachusetts. Sexton was a leading voice of the confessional school of poetry, writing frankly about family, illness and the inner life. The typewriter and the reading lamp beside her were the core of her working setup.

Jane Austen revised and wrote her novels at this small, twelve-sided walnut table at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire, where she lived from 1809 until shortly before her death in 1817. Here she revised Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice for publication and wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. The table sits by a window in what is now Jane Austen's House museum, with a quill set out for visitors.

Rudyard Kipling's study at Bateman's, the 17th-century house in Burwash, East Sussex, that he bought in 1902 and lived in until his death in 1936. The room is lined with books, maps and souvenirs of his travels, and the National Trust describes it as almost as he left it. Kipling wrote much of his later work here, including Puck of Pook's Hill.

George Bernard Shaw's writing hut at Shaw's Corner, in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, stands on a central pivot so it could be turned to follow the sun. Shaw nicknamed it "London," which let his staff tell unwanted visitors that he was away in the capital. He lived at the house from 1906 until his death in 1950, and the National Trust now opens both the house and the hut to the public.

Mark Twain's billiard room on the top floor of his house in Hartford, Connecticut, doubled as his private study. The family lived there from 1874 to 1891, the years in which Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. He often worked late at night, spreading manuscript pages across the billiard table.

Illustrators, cartoonists and book designers

Nikki McClure is a papercut artist from Olympia, Washington, known for her black-and-white cut-paper calendars and children's books. Every image is cut by hand from a single sheet of black paper with an X-Acto knife. Her studio, with its aquarium, window light and orderly desk, suits work that needs a steady hand and long hours of concentration.

Adrian Tomine, the cartoonist behind the comic series Optic Nerve, the graphic novel Shortcomings and many covers for The New Yorker, works at a tilted drafting table under a gooseneck lamp. Pinned on the wall are finished comic pages, a reminder that each page is planned panel by panel. The setup has barely changed from the drawing boards of earlier generations.

Chip Kidd is the graphic designer whose book covers for Knopf, including the original Jurassic Park jacket, changed how publishers think about cover design. His office overflows with books, toys and collectibles, especially Batman memorabilia. Shelves stacked with his own cover work double as an archive.

Marc Johns, a Canadian illustrator known for quirky, witty pen drawings, sketches at a plain wooden table with a small watercolour palette. His drawings often pair a simple image with a deadpan caption, and the table shows how little equipment that requires. Natural light from the window does the rest.

Lisa Congdon, an American illustrator and author of books on creativity, built her career after starting to draw in her thirties. Her studio is packed with colourful shelves, collections and hand-lettered banners, including the cheerful "I'M OK" sign on the wall. Trestle tables give her room to spread out several projects at once.

Yoshitomo Nara, the Japanese artist famous for paintings of big-headed children with mischievous expressions, pins dozens of drawings directly onto his walls. One of his signature faces looks down from the end of the room. Nara often works late at night with music playing, and his studio walls act like an open sketchbook.

Food writers, designers and musicians

Amanda Hesser, a former food writer and editor at The New York Times and co-founder of the cooking site Food52, works at a clean white desk beside a window. A handbag, a laptop and a framed still life of breakfast are about the only objects in view. Food writers often do their research in the kitchen, so the desk is mainly for writing it up.

Nigella Lawson, the British food writer and broadcaster whose first book, How to Eat, appeared in 1998, sits in a library lined to the ceiling with books, many of them cookbooks. Piles of volumes on the floor suggest a room in constant use rather than for display. Lawson has spoken of reading cookbooks the way others read novels.

Ray Eames, who with her husband Charles designed the Eames Lounge Chair and a long list of films, toys and exhibitions, worked in the famously crowded Eames Office in Venice, California. Every surface is covered with posters, objects and works in progress. The couple saw collecting everyday objects as research, and their office looked like it.

Yves Saint Laurent's studio in Paris combined trestle tables for sketching with walls covered in photographs, drawings and personal mementos. Saint Laurent sketched his collections by hand before they went to the ateliers to be made up. His later headquarters at 5 avenue Marceau is now the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris.

Orla Kiely, the Irish designer known for her retro leaf and stem prints on bags, clothing and homeware, works in a bright London studio with green filing lockers, stacks of sample books and a mannequin wearing one of her dresses. A dog sits in the middle of the floor. Her studio colours echo the palette of her prints.

This dimly lit photograph is captioned as showing John Lennon and Yoko Ono at work, with papers spread over a low table. Lennon and Ono worked together on music, films, art installations and peace campaigns from 1968 until his death in 1980. The exact date and location of the picture could not be confirmed.

What these workspaces have in common

Looking across all these rooms, three patterns stand out. First, natural light matters: Cézanne, Shaw and O'Keeffe all built or chose spaces around windows, and Shaw went as far as rotating his hut. Second, many people kept their work physically separate from the household, from Woolf's lodge and Dahl's hut to Pollock's barn. Third, there is no single "creative" look: Jane Austen's tiny table and Francis Bacon's chaos both produced lasting work.

Research on workspaces backs up that last point. Some studies suggest messy desks can encourage unconventional ideas while tidy ones support routine tasks, but the effect is small, and the habits behind the room matter far more than its style. What these photographs mainly show is consistency: a place set aside, returned to every day.

If you are setting up a space of your own, the practical lessons are simple: find good light, keep your main tools within reach, and protect some time and distance from interruptions. Everything else is personal taste.

Visiting the rooms that survive

Several of these spaces can be seen in person. Monk's House (Woolf), Shaw's Corner (Shaw) and Bateman's (Kipling) belong to the National Trust in England. Jane Austen's House is in Chawton, Hampshire, and the Brontë Parsonage Museum is in Haworth. Cézanne's studio is in Aix-en-Provence, Miró's is in Palma, Bacon's reconstructed studio is at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, the Pollock-Krasner House is in East Hampton, the Mark Twain House is in Hartford and Dahl's writing hut is at the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden. Check each site's opening times before travelling, as many are seasonal.

Sources: Wikipedia, Monk's House; Wikipedia, Shaw's Corner; Wikipedia, Bateman's; Wikipedia, Mark Twain House; Wikipedia, Pollock-Krasner House and Studio; Wikipedia, Hugh Lane Gallery; Wikipedia, Brontë Parsonage Museum; Wikipedia, Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre; Will Self's writing room (will-self.com); photo collection first compiled by Memolition and Acidcow; individual photographers were not credited there.

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