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Marcus is the Times 20th May:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article1816138.ece
When good drawing was in a gentleman's genes
An exhibition at the Soane Museum reveals some of the finest early "amateur" drawings in English architectureMarcus Binney, Architecture Correspondent
Today, when people act as their own architects, it is often with disastrous — even embarrassing — results. Not so in the 17th and 18th centuries when gentlemen, whether country squires, sober (or bibulous) academics or young noblemen, were often skilled in drawing.
John Harris’s inspired exhibition on the subject at the Soane Museum is the condensed fruit of a lifetime’s research, connoisseurship and, as he likes to put it, country-house snooping.
You need to read and look closely, but here is fresh light on some of the most inventive, lively and influential talents in the architecture of the period.
Harris takes huge pleasure in his first exhibit, “The Salisbury House porticus”, a viewing platform designed in September 1610 to stand at the end of Lord Salisbury’s garden overlooking the Thames in London. A full 25 years before Inigo Jones added his great portico to old St Paul’s this is a pure Corinthian colonnade of ancient Roman correctness with balustraded walk above. Each baluster is curiously surmounted by a dove bearing a twig in its beak. This drawing, discovered in the Hatfield House archives, is by Sir John Osborne, who is now considered to be the designer of one of the V&A’s most prized English Renaissance exhibits, the Haynes Grange Room, which has similar doves on the ceiling.
Next comes one of the finest early drawings in English architecture — again by an “amateur”. This is Kingston Lacy by Sir Roger Pratt who educated himself in architecture on a six-year grand tour of France, Italy, Flanders and Holland. Compared with today, when many professionally trained architects can hardly draw at all, the proficiency of these men is astonishing. Pratt’s handling of proportions and precise measurements, as well as shadow and modelling, are more than technical mastery, they show the ability to compose.
In France, as Harris points out, architectural drawing was a skill taught in academies. In England it seems to have been developed to an impressive extent by amateurs. How much they were self-taught or tutored by drawing masters is an intriguing question.
Harris develops his theme around circles of amateurs in Oxford and Yorkshire. In Oxford the key figure is Dean Aldrich, who designed the palace-like ranges around Peckwater Quad. One of the pupils whose talents he nursed was Sir Andrew Fountaine of Narford. Aldrich chose him to give the Latin oration to William III on his entry to Oxford in 1698 — such a success that Fountaine was promptly knighted. Another was Henry Herbert, the future Earl of Pembroke whom Horace Walpole regarded as a purer architect than either the Earl of Burlington or William Kent.
The tragedy is that simple snobbery and a fear of being tainted with trade prevented many of these figures from making wider use of their talents. Witness Lord Chesterfield’s remarks to his son encouraging him to take an interest in architecture but to leave the “minute and mechanical parts, to masons and bricklayers”, in contrast to Lord Burlington, “who has to a certain degree, lessened himself by knowing them too well”.
The Yorkshire group, which included Burlington, was formed of a web of landowners with family links. One of the most prolific was Thomas Worsley of Hovingham, whose taste for architecture, Harris believes, was nurtured in the library of his mother’s brother, Sir Thomas Frankland at Thirkelby Park, who had the finest collection of architectural books in the North of England. Worsley’s twin passions for horses and houses were combined in his designs for stables and his concept for his own house, Hovingham Hall, where stables riding house and hunting hall formed one entity with the house.
Harris is a believer in the architectural gene, and appropriately the initial idea for the exhibition came from the architectural historian and writer Giles Worsley, whose tragic death last year prevented him from undertaking the exhibition himself. It has nonetheless developed in a way which would have delighted him, bringing in a great range of Gothic amateurs including Sir Roger Newdigate, the creator of dazzling designs for fan vaulting and John Freeman, whose Gothic folly at Fawley is one of the earliest landmarks of the Gothic Revival.
One of the most accomplished drawings is by John Chute, whom Walpole thought “an Exquisite Architect, and of the purest taste both in Grecian and Gothic Styles”. This is a perspective of staircases, showing the ability to think in three dimensions, which is the hallmark of all true architects.
The paradox is that these gentlemen amateurs were at once able to develop their talents and skills thanks to their class, but in most cases this status inhibited the full use of them. Either way the lesson is that we would all be a great deal more visually and architecturally literate if drawing — as distinct from art — featured on the school curriculum.
A Passion for Building: the Amateur Architect in England 1650-1850 at the Soane Museum until September 1. A companion catalogue is available at £12.95 http://www.soane.org
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article1816138.ece
When good drawing was in a gentleman's genes
An exhibition at the Soane Museum reveals some of the finest early "amateur" drawings in English architectureMarcus Binney, Architecture Correspondent
Today, when people act as their own architects, it is often with disastrous — even embarrassing — results. Not so in the 17th and 18th centuries when gentlemen, whether country squires, sober (or bibulous) academics or young noblemen, were often skilled in drawing.
John Harris’s inspired exhibition on the subject at the Soane Museum is the condensed fruit of a lifetime’s research, connoisseurship and, as he likes to put it, country-house snooping.
You need to read and look closely, but here is fresh light on some of the most inventive, lively and influential talents in the architecture of the period.
Harris takes huge pleasure in his first exhibit, “The Salisbury House porticus”, a viewing platform designed in September 1610 to stand at the end of Lord Salisbury’s garden overlooking the Thames in London. A full 25 years before Inigo Jones added his great portico to old St Paul’s this is a pure Corinthian colonnade of ancient Roman correctness with balustraded walk above. Each baluster is curiously surmounted by a dove bearing a twig in its beak. This drawing, discovered in the Hatfield House archives, is by Sir John Osborne, who is now considered to be the designer of one of the V&A’s most prized English Renaissance exhibits, the Haynes Grange Room, which has similar doves on the ceiling.
Next comes one of the finest early drawings in English architecture — again by an “amateur”. This is Kingston Lacy by Sir Roger Pratt who educated himself in architecture on a six-year grand tour of France, Italy, Flanders and Holland. Compared with today, when many professionally trained architects can hardly draw at all, the proficiency of these men is astonishing. Pratt’s handling of proportions and precise measurements, as well as shadow and modelling, are more than technical mastery, they show the ability to compose.
In France, as Harris points out, architectural drawing was a skill taught in academies. In England it seems to have been developed to an impressive extent by amateurs. How much they were self-taught or tutored by drawing masters is an intriguing question.
Harris develops his theme around circles of amateurs in Oxford and Yorkshire. In Oxford the key figure is Dean Aldrich, who designed the palace-like ranges around Peckwater Quad. One of the pupils whose talents he nursed was Sir Andrew Fountaine of Narford. Aldrich chose him to give the Latin oration to William III on his entry to Oxford in 1698 — such a success that Fountaine was promptly knighted. Another was Henry Herbert, the future Earl of Pembroke whom Horace Walpole regarded as a purer architect than either the Earl of Burlington or William Kent.
The tragedy is that simple snobbery and a fear of being tainted with trade prevented many of these figures from making wider use of their talents. Witness Lord Chesterfield’s remarks to his son encouraging him to take an interest in architecture but to leave the “minute and mechanical parts, to masons and bricklayers”, in contrast to Lord Burlington, “who has to a certain degree, lessened himself by knowing them too well”.
The Yorkshire group, which included Burlington, was formed of a web of landowners with family links. One of the most prolific was Thomas Worsley of Hovingham, whose taste for architecture, Harris believes, was nurtured in the library of his mother’s brother, Sir Thomas Frankland at Thirkelby Park, who had the finest collection of architectural books in the North of England. Worsley’s twin passions for horses and houses were combined in his designs for stables and his concept for his own house, Hovingham Hall, where stables riding house and hunting hall formed one entity with the house.
Harris is a believer in the architectural gene, and appropriately the initial idea for the exhibition came from the architectural historian and writer Giles Worsley, whose tragic death last year prevented him from undertaking the exhibition himself. It has nonetheless developed in a way which would have delighted him, bringing in a great range of Gothic amateurs including Sir Roger Newdigate, the creator of dazzling designs for fan vaulting and John Freeman, whose Gothic folly at Fawley is one of the earliest landmarks of the Gothic Revival.
One of the most accomplished drawings is by John Chute, whom Walpole thought “an Exquisite Architect, and of the purest taste both in Grecian and Gothic Styles”. This is a perspective of staircases, showing the ability to think in three dimensions, which is the hallmark of all true architects.
The paradox is that these gentlemen amateurs were at once able to develop their talents and skills thanks to their class, but in most cases this status inhibited the full use of them. Either way the lesson is that we would all be a great deal more visually and architecturally literate if drawing — as distinct from art — featured on the school curriculum.
A Passion for Building: the Amateur Architect in England 1650-1850 at the Soane Museum until September 1. A companion catalogue is available at £12.95 http://www.soane.org