There are many gems in the Watts Gallery archive, but this is a firm favourite among friends and supporters of the Artist’s Studio Museum Network.

Artists at Home features 25 photogravures of leading Victorian artists depicted at home and in their studios, taken by photographer Joseph Parkin Mayall. A fascinating window into the lives of artists like G F Watts, John Everett Millais and Frederic Leighton – and a wonderful insight into how they wanted to portray themselves to their public. Just look at the carefully chosen objects that surround them – and the heroic poses (which, due to the photograph process, they would have had to hold for some time). In 1883 both Watts and Leighton were photographed for Artists at Home, at their studios in Holland Park in London. (Their houses had adjoining gardens allowing them to visit one another without going out into the street.) Leighton visited Watts in his studio every Sunday morning at 9 o’clock where the men would discuss art, philosophy and share their latest drawings and paintings. Watts’s London home was demolished in 1964; Leighton’s survives as Leighton House Museum – a member of the Artist’s Studio Museum Network.

This beautiful gold-embossed, blue cloth-bound volume was originally published in six monthly parts from March to August 1884. Each monthly part cost five shillings and included four portraits with their accompanying text. A Victorian collector’s dream!