After splitting their time between London and the foothills of the Catskill Mountains for over 20 years, the celebrated British artists Gary Hume and Georgie Hopton are saying goodbye to their expansive property in Accord, N.Y.
Ms. Hopton, 56, described the a long time of getting two lives — one fast-paced in a cosmopolitan metropolis, one other gradual in a bucolic valley — as “actually magical.” Mr. Hume, 61, added, “It’s like dishonest God.”
Mr. Hume and Ms. Hopton wouldn’t be promoting, they mentioned, in the event that they have been based mostly in Manhattan. However touring between London and Accord is a “palaver” they now not need to take care of.
“It’s time for an additional dream,” Mr. Hume mentioned.
The couple, who aren’t certain what that subsequent dream will appear like, are itemizing the 40-acre property for $4.25 million. They bought the home and 30 acres for $453,500 in 2002, after changing into enamored with the realm whereas visiting a pal in New Paltz. They purchased an adjoining 10 acres in 2013 for $50,000. The itemizing agent is Megan Brenn-White of the Upstate Curious Staff at Compass; annual taxes are $22,470.
Ms. Hopton and Mr. Hume may have chosen a second dwelling within the English countryside years in the past, however, as Ms. Hopton defined, they needed to be “pioneers, not retirees.”
The dueling worlds they created have lengthy been linked by their artwork. Mr. Hume, well-known for his place within the Younger British Artists motion of the late Eighties and ’90s, is acclaimed for his vibrant work on aluminum panels. Working in Accord has been a “nice aid” for him. There, he mentioned, “the tradition — nature — doesn’t give a rattling about your artwork.”
An identical dynamic has performed out for Ms. Hopton. A Max Mara prize nominee in 2007, she has lengthy been acknowledged for her engagement with numerous media, together with sculpture, textiles, collage, printmaking and pictures.
In London’s city surroundings, Ms. Hopton principally creates collages whose precision conveys the aim that the town provides her. “There’s readability in London,” she mentioned.
“However in New York,” she added, “all of the house makes every little thing questionable and doable.” Her artwork in Accord, extra summary and playful, entails portray with greens from her backyard. A sense of being “extra related to the universe” lends the artwork a transcendent high quality.
The sprawling property, nestled in slightly valley, contains constructions courting to the mid-Nineteenth century, curated pure options, like ponds and meadows dotted with Mr. Hume’s sculptures (one a 15-foot white stainless-steel wheel, one other a human-size limestone bud), a 2,300-square-foot dwelling and Mr. Hume’s ultramodern studio, which the couple added in 2016.
Strolling the paths that Mr. Hume cleared utilizing the cover as his information, or sitting on the stone patio overlooking one of many ponds adorned with lily pads and listening to the splash of a small waterfall, there’s a sense that you may be on both facet of the Atlantic — within the Catskills or Giverny. There’s no signal of the street, and people further 10 acres imply the undomesticated view is right here to remain.
The home’s structure and home windows capitalize on these views. The eating room and kitchen, outfitted with Miele home equipment, marble counter tops and a copper island, look out on the peace of meadows and woods. Each the household room, off the eating room, and the screened-in porch adjoining to it have a wood-burning hearth, as does the den on the opposite facet of the primary ground.
The house has three bedrooms upstairs, two smaller ones and a 550-square-foot main suite with a big toilet, a hallway lined with 5 closets and a view that Ms. Hopton described waking as much as as “heaven.”
The home was inbuilt 1860, and when the couple determined to broaden it in 2012, they didn’t need to lose its rustic appeal. Working with a neighborhood architect, Kurt Sutherland, they have been capable of hold the home’s cozy feeling at the same time as they doubled its sq. footage, including a main bed room, an open-plan residing, eating, and kitchen space and home windows overlooking a newly dug pond.
The home stays welcoming. Because the clothesline strung with a pair of paint-splattered denims attests, there’s little grandiosity there.
Past the house, there are numerous different spectacular buildings, together with a big barn nonetheless full of hay from when the couple stored goats years in the past, and nonetheless outfitted with earlier homeowners’ cow-milking devices. The couple has typically hosted dinner events there, a cavernous house the place gentle spills by way of a 15-by-20-foot entrance.
The property additionally has a hen coop that’s almost 50 yards lengthy and that Mr. Hume mentioned was constructed within the early Nineteen Forties by Swiss Jews who had fled the Nazis. One other coop is now “the sugar shack,” the place the couple makes maple syrup after tapping timber on the property. A backyard, tiered with stones and stuffed with butterflies and flowering rocket, is subsequent to a cedar sauna. Leaping into the pond after a sauna session is a treasured ritual.
Essentially the most putting function of the property is Mr. Hume’s 4,500-square-foot, two-story studio. With Corten metal siding, shuttered concrete impressed by the Hayward Gallery in London, a wall of home windows on the decrease stage and towering ceilings and northern gentle upstairs, the house looks like a up to date museum. It’s sparsely embellished as a result of Mr. Hume is a messy employee. “To make an omelet, you’ve bought to interrupt some eggs,” he mentioned.
Ms. Hopton’s studio is a brief distance away, down a landscaped flight of steps. It’s brilliant and ethereal with a ceiling over 20 toes tall and pine shiplap partitions. The studio the place she used to work is a guesthouse.
With a uncommon mixture of breathtaking surroundings and vintage appeal juxtaposed with Mr. Hume’s studio, this might be “extra like promoting artwork than promoting a house,” Ms. Brenn-White mentioned. “There are loads of intangible qualities that may’t be appraised.”
