Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuriesHitchcock, Henry-Russell
History
Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell
Architecture, Modern -- 19th century; Architecture, Modern -- 20th century
In England the Greek Revival was barely established as the dominant mode
in the twenties before it was challenged. Barry, as has been noted
earlier, began his career with the building of cheap Commissioners’
Gothic churches, but his favourite mode was the Renaissance Revival. We
have seen that in Germany the Renaissance Revival may be considered to
begin with Klenze’s Munich work of the mid twenties. Now, in 1827-8,
Barry built the Brunswick Chapel, later St Andrew’s, at Hove in a
_quattrocento_ mode—the exterior, that is, for the modest interior can
hardly be thus characterized, and in its present form includes various
changes since Barry’s time. The façade looks rather nineteenth-century
French to modern eyes; yet comparable French churches, such as Lequeux’s
Saint-Jacques-Saint-Christophe in Paris, are mostly from five to fifteen
years later (see Chapter 3). Barry doubtless turned to some of the
available French publications on the Italian Renaissance for his detail,
most probably to the _Architecture toscane_ of Grandjean de Montigny and
Famin, but he certainly did not derive the design of his church from
current Continental practice.
Following immediately upon the Brunswick Chapel, Barry built for Thomas
Attree of Brighton a symmetrical Italian Villa, now the Xavierian
College, with an architectural garden setting. This was part of a
scheme, otherwise unexecuted, for surrounding Queen’s Park, east of the
town, with a range of detached houses, some Italianate, some Tudoresque,
in an extensive suburban development of the order of Nash’s only
slightly earlier Park Villages. The intended effect can best be seen in
Decimus Burton’s Calverley Estate at Tunbridge Wells carried out over
the years 1828 to 1852.
Far more important, however, was the fact that Barry in 1829 won with a
_palazzo_ composition the competition for the new Travellers’ Club. This
was built in Pall Mall in the next two years beside the prominent corner
site where Burton’s astylar but still Grecian Athenaeum was rising.
Raphaelesque on the front—although not as derivative from Raphael’s
Pandolfini Palace in Florence as was claimed at the time—but rather
Venetian on the rear, this clubhouse notably eschews the flat barrenness
and the giant orders of the Grecian mode to throw emphasis on the
elegant aedicular treatment of the windows and the bold _cornicione_
which crowns the top (Plate 35B).
Very soon Charles Fowler (1791-1867), who owned the copy of Durand’s
treatise now in the Library of the Royal Institute of British
Architects, was introducing a more utilitarian sort of Italianism in the
Hungerford Market in London of 1831-3, now long gone, and in the Lower
Market at Exeter of 1835-6. There the Durandesque and almost basilican
interiors, destroyed in 1942, contrasted markedly with the Greek Doric
detailing of the façade of his Upper Market of 1837-8.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account