St Anne's Church, Kew, Anglican church near Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom
St Anne's Church, Kew is an Anglican church on Kew Green in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, built in the early 18th century. The building is surrounded by a raised churchyard and has been extended several times while keeping its original core.
The church was built on land provided by Queen Anne and completed in 1714. King George III funded an expansion in 1770 designed by Joshua Kirby, the court artist and architect connected to the royal family at Kew.
The churchyard holds the graves of painters Johan Zoffany and Thomas Gainsborough, both of whom lived and worked nearby. Walking among the old stones gives a sense of how closely this corner of London was tied to British painting.
The church is right on Kew Green and easy to reach on foot from the entrance to the Royal Botanic Gardens. It is worth setting aside some time to walk around the raised churchyard and read the old gravestones.
Camille Pissarro, a French Impressionist painter who was staying nearby in 1892, chose this church as the main subject of one of his paintings. It is unusual for a French Impressionist to have focused on such a typically English religious building.
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