Carl Laubin’s Painting Metiendo Vivendum Now Available as a Print

By Dominic Lutyens

In the Summer 2014 Newsletter, we featured an article about Carl Laubin’s painting Metiendo Vivendum (By Measure We Live), which gathers over 150 Lutyens buildings on one canvas. Picturing built and unbuilt works, shown to the same scale to indicate comparative sizes, it was inspired by Laubin’s visit to Castle Drogo during a trip to Devon and Cornwall, and saw the artist visit and draw as many of Lutyens’s built works as possible to include in his composition. The original painting is now owned by Sir Terry Farrell, who plans to hang it at his home at Great Maytham Hall, Kent.

Now, with Sir Terry’s encouragement, high quality giclée prints of the painting are available. Measuring 49cm by 74cm with an image size of 34cm by 59cm and a title block, as above, these are printed on heavy, matt fine-art paper. The print — named Metiendo Vivendum, A Tribute to Sir Edwin Lutyens O.M. — comes with a separate A4 key to the buildings. “My intention in painting Metiendo Vivendum was to show the remarkable variety of Lutyens’s work in a single image,” says Laubin. “When I was working on it, I often wondered where it would end up, hoping it might be in a Lutyens building. I was thrilled when Sir Terry rang to tell me he was planning to buy it and hang it at Great Maytham as part of a display of Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll-related pictures.

“For me, this is the perfect home for it. Sir Terry is committed to championing Lutyens’s architecture and has also been very enthusiastic about my producing prints of the painting, which will hopefully help disseminate an appreciation of Lutyens’s great and diverse body of work, while benefiting The Lutyens Trust financially.”

Sir Terry himself says: “I’m carrying out a project that involves the interior design of the main ground-floor sequence of halls, staircases and main public rooms at Great Maytham, a Lutyens masterpiece and an early example of his ‘Wrenaissance’ style. I have a home in the house, now converted into 12 flats. The project will involve selecting and hanging pictures on the theme of Lutyens and Jekyll as well as carrying out an interior design rethink of these rooms. In addition to Lutyens drawings from the RIBA collection in the main hall which I’ll be hanging there, there’ll be prints of portraits of political figures of the era in the salon called The Churchill Room.”

Price for an unframed print is £270, including delivery. Laubin is generously donating 50 per cent of profits on all sales to The Lutyens Trust. Payments can be made by cheque, payable to Carl Laubin and posted to him at: 8 York Road, Hitchin, Herts, SG5 IXA UK. Carl can be contacted at carl@carllaubin.com.