The artwork present, in its scale and painterly virtuosity,
infuses the living room with the sense of a great gallery.
The painting lends to this cultivated room a seriousness,
a depth. One senses a large, important collection behind
this single work, a
rich storehouse from
which it has been
selected. Yet for all
the hint of priceless
treasure present in this
apartment, its genius
lies in Drake���s refined
understatement. It is
an interior descended
from the days before
art above the couch
was obligatory; the
painting���s presence
signals single-minded
devotion to a high
visual arts quality.
Jamie Drake can pull
off purple (or lime
green, but that is another interior story!) and that is what
he does in the delicate violet-papered, carpeted and
draped drawing room. The lavender rug is sumptuous,
velvety; the curtains are a judicious print of purple forms
on white. In each room Drake has slung an outsized,
gorgeous chandelier of Venetian glass; this one is tinted
palest mauve. The loose-cushioned divan and tightback
HYLAND
