Since 1978, the Norfolk village of Wighton has been home to Alfred Cohen, an American artist, and his wife, Diana, who transformed a historic schoolhouse into a living studio and gallery. Known today as the School House Gallery, the space remains unchanged—an artistic sanctuary welcoming public visitors.
Like many 20th-century artists, Alfred Cohen was attracted to Norfolk, enticed by the expansive skies, the feeling of solitude, affordable housing, and the chance to record brief instances of beauty in the local environment.
Artistic Inspiration
Ralph Vaughan Williams noted the songs of fishermen in King’s Lynn’s boatyards; John Piper observed the skill of Medieval artisans in the area’s parish churches. Meanwhile, Alfred, often carrying a sketchbook, was present at the Lifeboat Café in Cromer, observing his neighbor with washing lines on blustery days, or farmers gathered around a pub fireplace.
The drama of daily life was painted compulsively in his lively, sharply perceptive and expressive manner. Alfred and Diana were inclined to transform buildings that had been workplaces for rural laborers, the very people who featured in Alfred’s artwork.
The School House Gallery
The Wighton schoolhouse had its own distinct features: its walls were constructed from knapped flint, a local material that the sculptor Henry Moore collected while on holiday nearby as a Royal College of Art student, visiting his sister, the school’s headmistress.
Alfred was excited by the unbroken artistic tradition, and he set up his painting and print studios in the tall classrooms filled with Norfolk’s famed light. From his childhood in 1920s Chicago, where he was raised in a liberal Jewish household, Alfred had always been fascinated by interiors.
He recalled pressing his face against a window to peer at a cozy, festive Christmas scene. His stepson, Max Saunders, remembers that Alfred often described this feeling of cheer using the German word gemütlichkeit, and that he aimed to create spaces where people would feel comfortable: sociable, warm, and delightful.
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A Home and Studio
Alfred learned carpentry from his father, a furniture dealer, and applied those skills to craft a welcoming atmosphere in the school’s functional areas. Wood paneling now conceals the pin-marked plaster of the old classroom walls, and fittings salvaged from a Kent pharmacy were relocated here, offering both display and storage for the commercial gallery where children once hung their coats.
In the painting studio he built a balcony and installed a cast-iron stove, features that echo the studios in Paris where he had trained. Behind the scenes he constructed a pine kitchen with a built-in Welsh dresser, a nostalgic nod to his father, who had apprenticed as a cabinetmaker in Aberystwyth.
Diana’s Belle Epoque wooden chairs enhanced the sense of homeliness, and at 96, she still uses them today. Alfred’s numerous sketchbooks are filled with collages of real and imagined interiors: meticulously cut-out sofas, rugs, and vases were arranged around magazine fires, decorated with illustrations, caricatures, and handwritten notes.
Many of these ideas evolved into the paintings and prints adorning every wall and surface of the studio and gallery. ‘Interiors mattered to him, and he painted them throughout his career,’ Max says. ‘They’re usually without people, but they carry their traces.’
Here at the School House, the work of this consummate storyteller blurs works of the mind and of reality. The 17 gas lights sourced from a junk dealer in Tunbridge Wells still cast their glow, as if illuminating the stage for imagination itself.
The 1980s fabric in the doorway of the ‘best room’, where Diana now sleeps, actually resembles the costume of Flautino, the mischievous flautist depicted in Alfred’s ‘Commedia Dell’Arte’ series. The English teapot set by the armchair, or the brushes ready for action in pots by the easel, seem to invite the artist to step back into the room.
