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
The Martyrs’ Memorial was purely English, the specific precedents for
the Albert Memorial mostly Continental: Italian, French, German, and
Flemish. The materials are cold and shining, polished granites, marbles,
and serpentines of various colours; and much of the detail is executed
in gun-metal left plain or gilded. A profusion of white marble sculpture
at various scales leads up to the seated bronze figure of the Prince by
J. H. Foley, finally installed in 1876, over which is a vaulted canopy
of brilliantly coloured glass mosaic. Enamels, cabochons of marble or
serpentine, and intricately crisp detail of the most metallic character
carry out Scott’s basic idea of a ciborium enlarged, like Bernini’s in
St Peter’s, to fully architectural scale.
Beside the Albert Memorial most of Scott’s other work of this period
lacks interest. His churches, particularly, are likely to be dull and
respectable, reflecting the new eclectic tastes of the day only in a
rather inconspicuous way. His Exeter College Chapel at Oxford of 1856-8
is a sort of Sainte-Chapelle; St John’s College Chapel at Cambridge of
1863-9 is equally monumental but somewhat less French in character and
also more original in its proportions. His secular work at Oxford and
Cambridge is also dull, lacking the Ruskinian touches that give a
certain vitality to the Meadow Buildings built for Christ Church in 1863
by Sir Thomas Deane and his son Thomas Newenham Deane (1828-99).
Far finer, however, is their Kildare Street Club in Dublin, facing the
Trinity College Museum across an expanse of lawn; for this continues the
best Ruskinian tradition of the work that they did earlier with
Woodward.[230]
A very striking example of the Gothic of the early sixties in England,
superior to anything at Oxford or Cambridge, is the Merchant Seamen’s
Orphan Asylum of 1861 by G. Somers Clark (1825-82), now the Wanstead
Hospital, in a suburb north-east of London. This is actually more what
is supposed to be ‘Ruskinian’, because of its Venetian detailing, than
the very original Dublin clubhouse with its consistent theme of
segmental arches and its bold naturalistic carving; but, like that, the
Wanstead building is generically High Victorian in the asymmetrical
massing, the strong colours of the black-banded red brickwork, and the
surprising richness of the decoration Clark lavished on a utilitarian
structure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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