If you could be a fly on the wall in any house, in any period of time, which would it be? Would you roll back time to travel to Sussex’s Charleston House with its bohemian indulgence, Bloomsbury philosophies and repose figure of Virginia Woolf staring into space?

Or would you visit the 1950s home of artist Ben Nicholson and sculptor Barbara Hepworth, two leaders of the St Ives School, where popping round for tea and a discussion on the fineries of modern abstraction might be painters Patrick Heron and Peter Lanyon?

For Nicola Coleby, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery’s chief curator of exhibitions, it would probably be Boxted House in Essex, the home of Bobby and Natalie Bevan, two extraordinary art enthusiasts whose collection spans the length and breadth of early 20th century English art.

She has been responsible for decorating four spaces on Brighton Museum’s first floor with the couple’s acquisitions for the gallery’s summer exhibition, From Sickert To Gertler: Modern British Art From Boxted House, according to how they were hung at the family home.

By recreating the manner in which they chose to display their works, Coleby has studied Bevan family letters, pictures and documents, and had intimate experience of the Bevans’ lives.

“They were never as bohemian as the Bloomsbury Set at Charleston,” she says, as we walk through the Dining Room, the Drawing Room, the Landing and a split space consisting of Natalie’s Sitting Room and Bobby’s Library, “nor were they revolutionary artists like the school at St Ives.

“But they were wonderful hosts, their weekend parties would include artists such as Francis Bacon, Cedric Morris and John Nash, and Bobby had a true collector’s eye.”

Of the house, Frederick Gore, the artist son of Spencer Gore, a friend from Bobby’s childhood and a regular visitor, commented “all the rooms were a delight. Everywhere was colour and comfort, surprises and intriguing treasures.”

Another guest, artist Maggi Hambling, who was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in 1997 to commemorate Oscar Wilde with a statue, recalled the atmosphere of her first visit to Boxted House as a 16 year old as “sophisticated, rather laissez-faire, even decadent… I remember the people and the gin more than the pictures.”

Bobby Bevan – son of artist Robert Polhill Bevan, who was born in Brunswick Square, Hove, and whose blue plaque sits outside the building’s number 17, and Stanislawa de Karlowska – was a distinguished advertising executive; his wife Natalie was a painter and ceramicist.

Thus, they were more probably more conventional than Hambling’s exuberant, youthful quote suggests.

The exhibition bears that out. Bobby’s collection of his father’s predominantly post-impressionist work is filled with the evocative London horse sales and horse-cab scenes that made his name. There is the washed beauty of The Cab Yard, Night in the Sitting Room, bought by the Brighton Art Gallery for £40 in 1913, and in the Dining Room, Showing At Tattersalls, which is full of movement and life.

On the Landing, celebrating Bobby’s passions, are works on paper by friends, acquaintances or inspirations. Paul Cézanne, Francisco De Goya and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec as well as his father’s etchings, would all have hung in the passages of Boxted House where, as Coleby says, “every wall, every nook and cranny, was covered with pictures”.

There are 100 works in the exhibition, which was originated by the National Galleries Of Scotland, that focus on Boxted House’s art at the time of Natalie Bevan’s death in 2007, and trace four themes of art life in the house.

Close friend of the Bevan’s Ronald Blythe says the pictures told of relationships rather than purchases, but with nine works, including Mark Gertler’s (who the Bevans knew in the 1920s and 1930s) portrait of a beautiful 18-year-old Natalie Bevan, and Walter Sickert’s (who Bobby’s parents knew from the contemporary London art scene) The System, heading to national collections, there is outstanding quality too.

Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm, £5 for adults, £3 concessions, Brighton and Hove resident £2.50.

Call 03000 290902.