Gardens, architecture, sculpture and fabriques, especially of the baroque kind. By David R. Marshall of Montacute Pavilion, Daylesford: the ultimate romantic getaway. https://www.dayget.com.au/montacute-pavilion-and-gardens
The design of the new National Gallery of Victoria Contemporary art gallery has just been announced (Fig. 1). The architects are Angelo Candalepas and Associates. The new building is in addition to the building build by Roy Grounds in 1968, visible in the foreground of the rendering, now NGV International (Fig. 2). The NGV was originally housed in the State Library of Victoria building, now wholly the State Library (Fig. 3).
Fig. 1. NGV International design.Angelo Candalepas and Associates Fig. 2. HGV International, Roy Grounds, 1968. Fig. 3. State Library of Victoria, Joseph Reed, 1856.
The original State Library building is a conventional exercise in classicism by Joseph Reed opened in 1856 that looks to the British Museum but without the severity of William Wilkin’s Greek Revival.
The Roy Grounds building owes much to Boullée in the blankness of the entrance façade with its row of high windows under a cornice, and to the Royal Palace at Caserta in its twin courtyard plan. The arched entrance is also Boulléesque. (The water wall behind has become a Melbourne icon.) The arches on the new building are clearly an (overscale, to judge from the rendering) homage to this.
New Traditional Architecture critics generally employ a Puginesque visual rhetoric that opposes good New Traditional Architecture to bad Modernism, an opposition internally visible in the photo of State Library (Fig. 3): between the formal complexity and cultural references of the Library building and the repetitive monotony of the apartment buildings that overlook it.
With the Roy Grounds building matters are more complex, particularly now that it is over 50 years old. Would we have wanted a New Traditional Architecture version of the State Library building in 1968? Would we want it now in the new building? It is significant that the new building is historicising in its own way, in that in using the arch motif it takes it point of visual reference from the old building. This is the only feature of much interest in what is a bland box that wallows in the the repetitive forms of routine modernist architecture, although handled with a purism not possible in a commercial apartment building (Fig. 1).
But such references are subsidiary to other factors. Like most contemporary architecture, the NGV Contemporary building is designed from the inside out; what we see in the rendering it is essentially something that forms a convenient enclosure for a series of showpiece interiors and view-directed spaces. The historical referencing on the outside is tokenistic. New Traditional Architecture, by contrast, is about wholesale historical referencing on the outside, with the result that possibilities for the interior can be quite limited, unless it embraces facadism.The interiors of NGV Contemporary are what the building is all about, each space determined to outdo in spectacle any other such spaces in any building, anywhere.
Culturally, New Traditional Architecture has a strong political component, never articulated by its protagonists, which is a political statement in itself, and it is frequently attacked from a leftward directon. In 1856 Victoria was a British colony attempting to recreate London in the antipodes, hence Reed’s design. In 1968 Victoria was emerging from a strong cultural conservatism (wowserism) into a progressive and increasingly prosperous world led by the US, for which an adventurous modernism, led by local architectural heroes Robin Boyd and Roy Grounds, was the only possible choice. A neo-traditional building was the last thing anyone wanted in 1968. (European New Traditional Architecture, by contrast, is in large part driven by a desire to replace 1960s post WWII reconstructions with something closer to what had been destroyed. It seeks to restore the integrity of disrupted townscapes.)
At the same time, Grounds’ building has none of the purism of hard-line functionalism: it is explicitly a cultural monument with cultural associations, although in formalistic art historical thinking these are sources rather than associations. Significantly, those associations/sources are international (revolutionary France, Royal Naples) because a universalist, albeit Eurocentric, art historical world view prevailed over narrow national associations.
Today the tradition of the 1960s modernists has strengthened, as has local nationalism. Architects in Melbourne that are accepted by the Europeans as New Traditional Architects reference earlier Melbourne architecture, especially that of the first half of the 20th century, such as Neo-Tudor or Art Deco, but never go back to the sources of that architecture, because that would constitutes Eurocentrism, even Cultural Appropriation, rather than being a response to local conditions. In this respect these architects do not differ from the architects of the NGV Contemporary, who would be horrified if they found themselves referencing any non-Modernist architecture from overseas, especially Europe. (Modernist architecture is, by contrast, considered to be universal and immune from nationalism or historicism.) And the references to Art Deco and Neo-Tudor acceptable in domestic architecture would be quite unacceptable in a showpiece public building like the NGV Contemporary. But referencing the local modernist tradition (Roy Grounds’ arches) is acceptable. Referencing French Revolutionary Boullée, however, is not, even though this was Grounds’ source.
There is little doubt the the NGV Contemporary design would not fare well in a New Traditional Architecture critique. And not without reason. It is a building that has lost its moorings. High Modernist architecture of the more adventurous kind, such as Grounds’ NGV, Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp, and above all Joern Utson’s Sydney Opera House, presents C coherent, often exciting image. This is because they are designed from the outside in. While this presented problems in the case of the Sydney Opera House, the result was a building that is, in the contemporary cliché, iconic: it presents an image that is memorable. NGV Contemporary completes fails to do this. A few token Groundsian arches do not an architectural image make. It is a building that appears to be designed from the inside out by committee, with the result that as an object it is a mess.
Grosssedlitz (yes, it has three s’s) is an intriguing unfinished baroque garden outside Dresden. It was begun in 1719 by August Christoph Count von Wackerbarth before being acquired by Augustus the Strong, who lost interest in it apart from having it as the site for festivities for the Polish Order of the White Eagle. It was never finished and suffered from neglect until being acquired by the Free State of Saxony in 1992. There is no palace since what there was there was constantly being pulled down and not rebuilt, but there are two orangeries completed after 1992 (Fig. 1). These house bitter oranges which are brought out in pots to populate the garden in summer. Presumably much of the planting dates from after 1992.
Fig, I. Orangery at Grossseidlitz.
The main feature is a theatre, populated with bitter oranges (Fig. 2). It displays the vast scale and repetition of fine detail of some of the best late Baroque German garden designs. There is a fine water display at the ‘stage’ end of the theatre (Fig. 3).
Figs. 2 and 3. Grossseidlitz, the theatre.
The simplicity of this scheme- just grass, gravel, and regular formal topiary, is strangely restful, far more so than any other Baroque garden I know, all of which have brights displays of colour (Figs. 4, 5).
Figs 4, 5. Grossseidlitz. Simplicity and serenity.
The statues at Grosssedlitz are rather fine examples of Rococo garden statuary, including a nymph and satyr which has some interesting passages (!) (Figs. 6, 7).
Figs. 6, 7. Grossseidlitz, Nymph and Satyr statue.
The most memorable feature is the way many of the fountains and terraces never reached the operational stage, so that we only have the raw, but intact stonework in place, and everything around it that was intended to have been pools and paths is grassed (Figs 8, 9, 10) This gives it a remarkable serenity.
Figs 8, 9, 10. Grosseidlitz, Grassy pools. Unfinished pool system.
The grassed pools are quite fascinating, and almost constitute a design idea in its own right. Waterworks on a decent scale are difficult and expensive, and require heavy investment in pumps and plumbing, as without them they become mosquito farms (at least in Australia). So the idea of a grassed space that appears to be, or represents, a pool is an attractive one. Grosssedlitz is heavy on stonework, which might be hard to justify in a pool that is not a pool, though if you think about it the situation is no different: both are instances of useless garden features.
The challenge of Oiserie is that there are no rules: it is a field for invention. But its starting point is seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Chinoiserie. Compared to Rococo, there are many more components in Chinoiserie. The Rococo relies on a relatively restricted range of forms: c-scrolls, shell forms, basket weave and a few others. Chinoiserie is much more open. But as with all styles, there are clusters of components that recur. By identifying some of these and going from there it is possible to create some kind of analytical order. I want to select one of these: the combination of red and black.
This choice is interesting for a number of reasons. It could be argued that by selecting this colour combination I am inventing ahistorical concepts. Yet the red and black combination is so common that I am sure that the artisans in question, or their patrons or supervising architects, did consciously choose it as a theme. Indeed, I would argue that this choice was as conscious as that between the Doric and Corinthian orders, except that the parameters of the ‘red and black colour order’, if we may so call it, were less rigidly codified than the Classical orders. Indeed it may be worth running with this kind of language, as Batty Langley did with Gothic, and William Chambers with Chinese architecture.
But is ‘red and black’ an order? An order, like the Doric order, is assembled from a system of named components controlled by fractions and ratios. The ‘Red and Black Order has no components, or rather only two: the colours red and black. Or perhaps these colours are associated with particular forms, though I doubt it.
Historically, these colours have their origins in oriental lacquer, which was usually in these colours.
Let me begin with the example of a Chinoiserie room from the Sternberk Palace in Prague, now in the National Gallery, Prague (Fig.1). The walls were decorated by Jan Vojtek Ignaz Kratochvil (1667-1721) (museum label).
Fig. 1. Chinoiserie room from the Sternberk Palace in Prague, now in the National Gallery, Prague
The museum label calls the black ‘lacquer’ and the red forms ‘brown pilasters’, though they look red to me (Fig.2).
Fig. 2. Whole panel.
Harlequin in Renaissance pictures
These red pilasters are rendered at the top as relatively classical caryatids (Fig. 3), but the body of the pilaster is unclassical in being a free shape. In many ways they are more like balusters than pilasters, and perhaps the designer had this in mind. But more probably the ‘pilaster’ was a means of getting from caryatid head to base, beginning with a columnar form, broad at the top and rounded anthropomorphically to form ‘shoulders’ for the caryatid, and then concave-convex-concave with some steps, done freehand according to the designer’s innate sense of form, and drawing on long experience with such sequences. None of this is Chinese in any way.
Fig. 3. Caryatid.
One can intuit that the artisan’s thinking ran something like this: (1) the colour theme is to be red on black. (2) The red component needs to be tall and thin to fit the available space. (3) I will make it a caryatid. (4) The pilaster ‘body’ needs to be ‘Chinoiserie’; that is, fantastic and over the top, while being made from a thin flat sheet of wood. (5) I will make the upper part broad to support the caryatid bust, the rest I will let myself go within the limits of the space. (6) I will use the kind of linearity I am familiar with from balustrades and mouldings: that is, curves, steps, short straight sections. (7) I will enrich this with gold shells (there may be an iconographic reason for the shells) (Fig. 4) and ormolu (Fig. 5), with little pictures in the Chinese style to keep it Chinoiserie (Fig. 6). (8) But mostly, as with the base (Fig. 7), I will rely on my classical tradition of mouldings, scrolls and masks.
Fig. 4. Shells and Chinese picture.Fig. 5. Ormolu.Fig. 6. Chinese picture.Fig. 7. Base.
This series of posts (A-C) discusses depictions of small buildings that I feel inclined to appropriate to the category of fabriques. Images by the author unless otherwise stated.
Sebastian Vrancx’s An Elegant Company Dining Outdoors, c. 1610–1620 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, depicts a banquet at a villa (Fig. 1).[1]
Fig. 1. Sebastian Vrancx (Antwerp, 1573 – Antwerp, 1647), An Elegant Company Dining Outdoors, c. 1610–1620. Oil on oak. 91 × 126 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Inv. 58.27.
The table is spread with food, but the party is breaking up and entertainers have begun their act. There are plates, and hence places, for six people down the left side of the table, and there are corresponding plates on the right except for the fifth. There is one plate at the head of the table, and one at the foot. Assuming six settings per side, the seating totals 14. I can see twelve people who aren’t servants, including one on the stairs and a couple beside the parapet. If we privilege the figures over the plates, and assume that the extra plate on the left is an inconsistency, we would have five persons on each side with one at each end, so perhaps the true setting is 5+5+2 (12 in total).
At the head of the table the chair, a ‘captain’s chair’ of higher status han the others, has been pushed back, with some linen folded over it (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. The host’s chair.
This is clearly the chair of the host, but where is he? The couple by the parapet would have been on the right side, which leaves the man on the stairs as the host, though what he is doing here is unclear (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3. The man on the stairs
He wears the same tall grey hat as the two mean on either side of the host position, both of whom wear swords, which may mean that they are all part of the same household.
If we go clockwise around the table the seating is as follows (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4. The guests at their table
A man receiving wine from a waiter (Fig. 5), whose left hand is close to, but does not touch, the hand of a woman beside him (Fig. 6).
Fig. 5. The man at the left.Fig. 6. Hands of the man at left and the first woman.
This had seems to be resting on something; her other hand touches the edge of the table. She stares straight ahead at the woman opposite but is evidently with the man beside her. Next is a standing man wearing doublet and breeches who holds a fold of linen matching the one on the host’s chair over his right arm, and he supports his left arm on the table. Next is a woman in pink with a glass in her left hand and the other hand on her lap: these two must be a couple. Next is a woman wearing black with red hair and a ruff (Fig. 7).
Fig. 7. The group at the end of the table.
She holds hands with the man at the foot of the table, also wearing a ruff and doublet. He has his arm outstretched, as if in conversation, Corresponding to the woman with a ruff is man in a tall black hat, ruff and doublet. One is prompted to read him as a woman but the clothing is male. He has no obvious partner unless it is the woman opposite and the man at the foot of the table is unattached but making progress with the woman beside him. Next would be the couple by the parapet (Fig. 8).
Fig. 8. The couple at the parapet.
The woman was probably seated next to the foot of the table, which means that on either side of the foot of the table there would have been two pairs of women. The man wears a tall black hat, matching doublet and tunic-like breeches and a sword. Returning to the table, next comes a woman in blue and then the man to the right of his host, who wears a tall grey hat, leather doublet, and a roman-style leather(?) slashed skirt.
The Table
Looking more closely at the table setting, beside each plate is a small loaf of bread; I count 11, or possibly 12, loaves (Fig. 9).
Fig. 9. The table setting.
The plate in front of the host has what looks like fruit peelings (Fig. 10).
Fig. 10. The host’s plate.
The plate to his left has an oval object, probably a slice of bread, perhaps taken from the host’s loaf. The other plates are bare. Each placing seems to have a knife, of which seven are clearly visible. Down the middle of the table are seven serving plates, four of which contain roast birds with this claws visible (and possibly a fifth), one of which seems to be in a foetal arrangement. One plate has a pie of some kind with a gridded pattern, perhaps strips of pastry. The last plate looks messy, perhaps because what it contained has been consumed. Two placing have wine glasses, one empty, one half full, while one woman holds a glass in her hand and the man at the left of the host is having his glass filled.
The Entertainers
The party is being entertained by a troup of Commedia dell’Arte entertainers who emerge from a porch in the style of imaginary architects like Vredeman de Vries.[2] Between the columns of the porch is the Doctor (I think) (Fig. 11), behind him an Innamorata, Pantaloon, and at the side is a lute-Zanni) playing his lute like a rock star (Fig. 12).
Fig. 11. the doctor.Fig. 12. The Commedia dell’arte troupe.
Between the steps and the table is a tumbler, which I think recalls Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Fig. 13).
Fig. 13. the Tumbler.
A stool nearby may be part of his act. A white dog is reacting to him and a boy, or perhaps dwarf, flees from the scene; this is surely part of the act.
The most fascinating member of a troupe is a woman whose headgear is an extravagant, and perhaps trangressive version of the headgear of the two women nearest the head of the table, who must be aristocrats (Fig. 14). She is presumably the Innamorata, although in commedia dell’Arte the Innamorata is not normally masked.
Fig. 14. The headdresses of the two women at the front and the Innamorata.
I do not know the name of the starched-looking hairpiece. The player has a piece attached at the back of the hed to which red, blue and white plumes are attached, as well as semi-transparent forms that look like the wings of a giant insect like a dragonfly (Fig. 15).
Fig. 15. The Innamorata (?).
There is another plume or feather attached at the top of the starched part. Her lace collar is artfully spiky and her decolletage is slightly more prominent than the other women. It would be good to know about the history and signaficance of the headgear of these three women.
Venus and Cupid
Another figure of interest is Venus in the group of Venus and Cupid at the foot of the stairs (Fig. 16).
Fig. 16. The Venus and Cupid statue
This is rather unclassical in that Venus is as animated as the ‘living figures’ as unclassically alive. She has her hair up in a contemporarty style and displays a pert profile with uptilted nose (Fig. 17).
Fig. 17. Head of Venus statue
Her body displays a twist hat goes beyond classical contrapposto, and she displays it artfully displays using a cloak that is draped over her left arm and tied around her neck so that it falls down her back. Her hips are somewhat narrow, so that her right side forms a shallow undulating vertical line from armpit to Cupid. Her presence, of course, signifies hat it is a pleasure garden, as the acivities of the living figures make obvious. Matching her position at the base of the stairs us a statue of Apollo.
Bibliography
M. A. Katritzky, ‘Lodewyk Toeput: some pictures related to the “commedia dell’arte”’, Renaissance Studies, March 1987, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 71-125 JSTOR Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24410012
M. A. Katritzky, ‘Harlequin in Renaissance pictures’, Renaissance Studies , December 1997, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 381-419.
[1] Sebastian Vrancx (Antwerp, 1573 – Antwerp, 1647), An Elegant Company Dining Outdoors, c. 1610–1620. Oil on oak. 91 × 126 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Inv. 58.27. Image from the Museum website.
[2] The main discussion of Commedia dell’arte in paintings like this seem to be by Katritzky. My identifications of the figures is a little hazy.
Fig. 1. Sebastian Vrancx (Antwerp, 1573 – Antwerp, 1647), An Elegant Company Dining Outdoors, c. 1610–1620. Oil on oak. 91 × 126 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Inv. 58.27. Image from the Museum website.
This series of posts (A-C) discusses depictions of small buildings that I feel inclined to appropriate to the category of fabriques. They work outwards from the fabrique to the image as a whole, as required. Images by the author unless otherwise stated.
As with all paintings by Sebastian Vranx, his An Elegant Company Dining Outdoors the in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest is a composite of elements derived from various sources, which is what makes it interesting (Fig. 1).[1] In part A I discussed the elements drawn from the Villa d’Este.
The foreground is essentially a stage set, with a portico with veined columns at the right facing a horseshoe staircase that encloses a statue of Pegasus striking the rock inspired by the one at the Villa d’Este. The middle ground sends mixed messages. There are formal gardens on either side of a pool which is almost impossible not to read as being set at a lower level than he main stage, but there are no steps on the path which is at the same level as the main stage. Similarly the wall at the left is both a wall with a gateway and a retaining wall of a terace that supports the trellis fabrique. The third distance is an open square surrounded by walls with a tower in one corner and a rusticated gateway. This has the air of being a space with topographical roots in some open space in Rome. Beyond this is the landscape proper.
The vanishing points of the porch, pool, and terrace are consistent and located low on the centre line of the rusticated gate (Fig. 2). The vanishing point of the wall with a tower is shifted slightly to the right, and possibly fractionally lower. The trellised archway at the end of the pool is in fact huge, much higher than the porch if it were repeated at the near end of the pool.
Fig. 2. Vrancx Elegant Company with perspective construction lines added.
The Pool
The pool (Fig. 3) has steps leading down into the water on three sites. There are ducks on the water, but the steps imply that one could enter the pool,perhaps for swimming.
Fig. 3. Detail of Vrancx, Elegant Company, showing pool, garden, courtyard and landscape.
The Trellis Herms
Although difficult to see, it is clear that the ends of this trellised archway are terminated with grotesque herms in what is presuably blackened wood (Fig. 4). They are highly elongated with big bellies and possibly male genitalia (or is the right hand one female?), with some drapery above the shaft. The heads are indistinct and possibly grotesque.
Fig. 4. Herms on central trellis arch.
These seem to be derived from a source like plate 29 of Vredeman de Vries’ Hortorum Viridiariumque, Antwerp, 1583, plate 29 (Fig. 4a).
The rusticated gateway is seen through the trelis arch a nd is set in the wall of the final courtyard (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5. Courtyard with rusticated gateway.
It is a fairly standard Mannerist gateway with banded columns, stepped voussoirs, an oval shield over the keystone, a split pediment and transitional volutes (Fig. 6).
Fig. 5. Rusticated gateway.
[1] Sebastian Vrancx (Antwerp, 1573 – Antwerp, 1647), An Elegant Company Dining Outdoors, c. 1610–1620. Oil on oak. 91 × 126 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Inv. 58.27. Image from the Museum website.
This series of posts (A-C) discusses depictions of small buildings that I feel inclined to appropriate to the category of fabriques. They work outwards from the fabrique to the image as a whole, as required. Images by the author unless otherwise stated.
The Fabrique on the Terrace
A painting by Sebastian Vranx in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, depicts a banquet in a villa (Fig. 1).[1]
Fig. 1. Sebastian Vrancx (Antwerp, 1573 – Antwerp, 1647), An Elegant Company Dining Outdoors, c. 1610–1620. Oil on oak. 91 × 126 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Inv. 58.27.
It has been dated 1610–1620. Vrancx was a pupil of Paul Bril in Rome in and this painting seems to draw on representations of the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, outside Rome, by Bril (see below), and probably the Villa d’Este directly. The building with two towers at the top left is how the main building of the Villa d’Este appears from the main side of the garden (that is, the fountain of the Organ area), which is how it appears in a frescoed view within the villa itself, which is probably the ultimate source (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. Fresco of Villa d’Este within the villa.
The details vary, but Vrancx and others around Bril, such as Willem van Nieulandt I and II, did not (mostly) paint accurate topographical views (the veduta as a popular genre had to await the eighteenth century), yet the topographical origins of their works, or sections of their works, are often evident.
To clinch the connection with the Villa d’Este there is, at upper left, a statue of Pegasus striking the rock to create the spring of Hippocrenes, the inspring well of the muses on Mount Helicon (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3. Vrancx, Elegant Company, detail, statue of Pegasus stroking the rock.
This was a common trope in Renaissance gardens, and one of the most influential instances was at the Villa d’Este, where it is located in a position corresponding to the one shown by Vrancx. Brill, Vrancx, and Jan Breughel all made topographical drawings at Tivoli. The disposition of the garden, in the loosest sense, with a distant view to a city are also reminiscent of the ‘classic’ view in the Villa d’Este, where the city is Rome.
The fabrique of interest here is clearly a garden structure (Fig. 4), on a terrace above the sunken garden where the main action takes place.
Fig. 4. Vrancx, Elegant Company. Trellis building on the terrace.
It is quite a solid little building, but it is not clear what Vrancx is trying to tell us about its materials. The barrel vaulted roof is ribbed, like corrugated iron, which suggests trelliswork. On the other hand it appears very solid, with thick corner piers and a frieze shaped like coarse stonework, as if Vrancx is trying to tell us it is made of brick and pantiles (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5. Vrancx, Elegant Company. Trellis building on the terrace, detail..
There is an aedicular doorway on the long side, and the ends appear to be solid. But inside the doorway one can see hints of a criss-cross pattern. In the centre of the roof is a drum zone on a rectangular plan with volutes at the corners, with round windows, a horizontal ellipse on the front and a circle or vertical ellipse on the side. There is a round window in the lunette of the end bay. Above this is a shallow vertical dome with external ribs and horizontal bands which is hard to read as other than trellis work. Yet the ribs on the fancy umbrella-like finial read better as tiles. There are round knobs on the top the arched ends of the bilding. Around the base are tall vases with tall plants. In the wall is a barrel vaulted gateway, which is necessarily masonry, but the extension at the back appears to be trelliswork, and there is a crowning ball, all of which points to the fabrique being trelliswork. The gate has a rectacgular extension to accommodate a niche, perhaps with a staue, with a shallow domed roof and gilded finial.
Typologically it reads like a chapel, but there are no crosses anywhere, Aesthetically it is interesting without being exciting. Usually with Vrancx there is a source somewhere, however transformed, and in this case I wonder whether it is the Villa d’Este, probably as represented by Paul Bril.
In Duperac’s well-known engraving of the project Villa d’Este (and its derivatives) in the sixteenth century (not everything shown was executed) we can see on the flat ground is a system of trellis–work tunnels with pedimented openings, octagonal crossing features, and gateways (Figs. 6, 7).
Fig. 6. After Dupérac, Villa d’Este, engraving, coloured. Fig. 7. After Dupérac, Villa d’Este, engraving, coloured, detail of trellises. .
These are clearly the inspiration for the trellis work and domed building in Bril’s drawing of Work in the Vineyards: March, in the Louvre (Figs. 8, 9).[2] In another Bril drawing (Fig. 10),[3] where a version of the Villa d’Este main building can still be discerned, we see a more elaborate octagonal domed trellis work building.
Fig. 8. Paul Bril (1554-1626), Le Mois de Mars: le travail de la vigne, 1598. Paris, Louvre, Inv.19786. Recto Fig. 9. Paul Bril (1554-1626), Le Mois de Mars: le travail de la vigne, detail.Fig. 10. Paul Bril, Palace and Park with Terrace overlooking a River: May. Drawing, Paris, Louvre. Ruby, cat. 25.
(These are combined in Fig. 11.)
Fig. 11. Comparisons of trellised buildings in Vrancx, Dupérac and Bril.
It is interesting that Bril in the first drawing shows a pepperpot with a ball finial on the top of the octagonal trellis structure. I am not sure what other data there is about the form of the Villa d’Este trellis-work as executed, but it is possible that it had such pepperpots, and that this is why Brill shows them. In the second drawing (Figs 10, 11) the octagonal building is separated from the rest, but it looks like it rises above a section of barrel-vaulted trellis-work with an arched opening. The frieze breaks out into a compound pediment, or else a shallow triangular pediment with a shallow segmental opening. There is a round opening in the octagonal dome and a pepperpot with a ball finial. Putting this against the Vrancx suggests the following scenario. The main barrel vault of Vrancx’s structure derives from the barrel-vaulted trellises, especially the one in the second Bril drawing, if not the Villa d’Este itself. The round-headed entrance was suggested by the one in the octagon in both Bril drawings, marriedto the pedimented opening in the barrel-vaulted trellis in Duperac. The rhythm of this with the round heated features in Duperace suggested the pedimented opening-rounded headed window sequence in Vrancx. Vrancx’s round dome can be seen as a variation on the octagonal ones, the oval windows a development of the round one in the secomd Bril drawing. The volutes and umbrella finial, however, Vrancx’s contribution, or are from some other source, as in the blockiness of his ‘frieze’.
Some may find such a reading too speculative, and there are a number of ways one can formulate Vrancx’s assumed choices, but I believe that this is the way an artist like Vrancx worked. The result is a building which can be understood an an original architectural creation (not such a pictorial one) that riffs on the trellis work of the Villa d’Este as seen through Bril’s eyes.
Bibliography
Marianna Haraszti-Takács, ‘Un tableau de Sebastian Vrancx à la Galerie des Maîtres Anciens’, Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts, 1961, 18, 51-62. BHR (1947-): Per K 540-5470.
Louisa Wood Ruby, Paul Bril: the drawings, Brussels, Brepols, 1999. UniM Baill 741.9493 RUBY
[1] Sebastian Vrancx (Antwerp, 1573 – Antwerp, 1647), An Elegant Company Dining Outdoors, c. 1610–1620. Oil on oak. 91 × 126 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Inv. 58.27. Harlequin in Renaissance pictures It is discussed by Haraszti-Takács, but I do not have access to this at the moment. Katritsky. says that it is signed. See the summary of Vrancx;s relationship with Bril in Ruby, p. 45, which focuses on his Roman ruin drawings. Vrancx arrived in Rome in 1596 ‘and clearly went right to work in the Bril studio’. From the beginning he drew Roman ruins, and some of his drawings ‘have motifs that stem from the Bril studio.’ But views corresponding to Bril’s are often made from different angles, indicating that he drew to the same motifs independently.
[2] Paul Bril (1554-1626), Le Mois de Mars: le travail de la vigne, 1598. Encre brune; lavis brun; pierre noire; plume, 196 x 340 mm. Paris, Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, Cabinet des dessins, Fonds des dessins et miniatures, Inv.19786. Recto.
[3] Paul Bril, Palace and Park with Terrace overlooking a River: May. Drawing, Paris, Louvre. Ruby, cat. 25.
There was also, it seems, a Chinese bridge that went with the ‘house’ or temple. I can’t seem to find any primary sources for this. This is long gone.
There is today a Chinese bridge nearby made of brick and stone, which was erected in the nineteenth century. There is a nice view of the Chinoiserie fabrique from the top, some distance away (Fig. 32). This bridge has on the inside of the parapet at the highest point a plaque with a coronet, an initial with a G in it, and the date 1876 (Fig. 33). Conner writes that it was built in 1870—an error?[1] Conner links the substantial nature of this bridge to an exhibition of things Chinese that followed the ending of a war with China in 1842.[2] This is: Wm. B. Langdon, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Chinese Collection, now exhibiting at St. George’s Place, Hyde Park Corner, London, with condensed Accounts of the Genius, Government, History, Literature, Agriculture, Arts, Trade, Manners, Customs And Social Life of the People of the Celestial Empire, London: Printed for the Proprietor, and to be obtained only at the Chinese Collection, 1842.[3]
Fig. 32. Wrest Park, 2013. View of the Chinoiserie fabrique from the ‘Chinese’ bridge.
Fig. 33. Wrest Park, 2013. Bridge, inside of parapeet.
Langdon gives an interesting attack on the
opium trade and Christian missionaries:
If European and American traders may fairly blame the illiberality of the Chinese, these have certainly just ground of complaint against them in the illegal practices to which their cupidity tempts them. Fifteen to twenty millions worth of opium has been for years, in defiance of the laws and known wishes of the government annually emptied upon the shores of China by Christian merchants!
Alas for missionary effort, so long as the
grasping avarice of the countries whence the missionaries come, sets at naught
every Christian obligation before the very eyes of the people whom it is sought
to convert. Most devoutly do we long for the auspicious day, when the pure
religion of Jesus, shall shed its sacred influences on every human being; but
we believe it will not come, till the principles of that religion shall take a
firmer hold upon the affections of those who profess to enjoy it, and rear a
mightier embankment around their sordid and stormy passions. When the
missionary shall find an auxiliary in the stainless life of every compatriot who
visits the scene of his labours for purposes of pleasure or of gain, when he
can point not only to the pure maxims and sublime doctrines proclaimed by the
Founder of his faith, but to the clustering graces that adorn its professors,
then indeed will the day dawn, and the day-star of the millennium arise upon
the world![4]
As Conner points out, this exhibition
included architectural models, including bridges.[5] In
contrast to earlier Chinoiserie bridges, Chinese bridges, according to Langdon,
were substantial and made of stone, and in many respects were like European
bridges. The stone slabs, are ‘frequently fourteen feet long by four or five in
breadth’. He also stresses that they do not have keystones. The only one he
illustrates is the ‘bridge at Honan, near Canton’ (Fig. 34), but this is taken from a painting, not a model. It is
debateable whether this bridge lacks keystones. There are three arches,
rendered as somewhat parabolic, with straight rising ramps and a solid parapet
with relief ornament.
Fig. 34. Honan Bridge (Langdon).
The bridge items are as follows:
[Case X. Lacquered ware and articles of vertù.] On p. 55, No. 140. Model of a bridge at Fo Shan, near Canton, built of granite, and of excellent workmanship. Bridges in the vicinity of the city, are constructed as footways, though horses are sometimes taken over. Fo Shan is a village situated a few [p. 56] miles to the S. W. of Canton, where most of the manufactories are carried on, and said to be as populous as Canton itself.’
[Case XI, Numerous miscellaneous articles] p. 57, no. 189, ‘Model of a bridge of one arch, near Canton.’
[Case XV. Models of Chinese Summer Houses] p. 67. No. 353. Bridge at Honan, near Canton, built of granite. [presumably a model]
[Case XVIII] p. 73. No. 361. Bridge of five arches, at Fa-Tee, built of granite. The solid and substantial manner in which the stone bridges are built, can hardly fail to interest the visitor to this collection; while the style, buttresses, breakwaters, &c., will remind him of the modern structures of London and of Europe generally. It is remarkable, that the Chinese construct arches without key-stones, as will be seen on reference to these models. The blocks of stone, or rather slabs, which form the level of their bridges, are frequently fourteen feet long by four or five in breadth; how they manage to place them in their proper positions seems extraordinary, as no machinery for the purpose has been found, and the Chinese assert it is accomplished merely by manual labour.
[Case XVIII] p. 73, No. 371. Specimens of stones of which the above bridge is built.
‘PAINTINGS. [The enumeration of pictures in the collection commences with No. 1000, which the visitor will find on the left hand of the screen fronting the entrance to the saloon. It may be proper here to remark, that all paintings and drawings in this collection are by Chinese artists exclusively.]’. This seems to go to no. 1119. All these on pages 111-124. No. 1260 is on p. 139.
p. 121, 1087. A river scene and bridge.
p. 122, No. 1092. Water view, with bridge.
p. 139, No. 1260. Bridge at Honan, near Canton (Fig. 34).
The Wrest bridge is likewise solid, being
made of brick and stone, and has a lot of charming features, although one does
not a first read it as being Chinese. By contrast, wooden bridges based on
Palladio, such as the one at Wörlitz, are often interpreted as being Chinese
when they are not. This bridge is a good example of how the choice of the
Chinoiserie manner is primarily an opportunity to employ a varied repertory of
forms in new ways that do not refer to classical models or to established
traditions of, in this case, bridge-building.
Here the main arch is a compound arch that
is neither Chinoiserie Chinese nor real Chinese and not dissimilar from many
eighteenth-century bridges (Fig. 35).
The novelty is the way the bricks project to form ribs (Fig. 36). There is the Western emphasis on the central keystone,
but it is not the traditional downward tapering wedge-shaped stone but a
rectangular block that expands into a wedge running the other way that supports
a projection that runs up to a ball on the parapet, thus inverting the
orientation and function of the wedge form. Meanwhile (Fig. 35) the brick stringcourse starts by following the main arc of
the compound curve before curving upwards to run horizontally onto the bank.
The parapet does the same thing before being cut away to make the parapet much
lower on the back. This creates a nice wavy line terminated by another stone
ball. The view of the approaches (Fig. 37)
is also pleasingly sinuous in the way the low parapets on the bank splay
outwards to echo the sinuosity of the main parapet. The main parapet sections
are ornamented with recesses rectangles in the brickwork (Figs 33, 36), which might have been suggested by something like the
Honan bridge but is emphatically devoid of Chinese reference.
Fig. 35. Wrest Park, 2013. Bridge from side.
Fig. 36. Wrest Park, 2013. Bridge ‘keystone’.
Fig. 37. Wrest Park, 2013. Bridge approaches.
It would be good to know more about this
bridge.
Chinese
Boat
Jemima also had a Chinese boat for the lake (Fig. 38). But that is another story.
[3] A Descriptive Catalogue of the
Chinese Collection, Now Exhibiting at St. George’s Place, Hyde Park Corner,
London, with Condensed Accounts of the Genius, Government, History, Literature,
Agriculture, Arts, Trade, Manners, Customs And Social Life of the People of the
Celestial Empire. By Wm. B. Langdon, Curator of the Collection. Tenth English
Edition, London; Printed for the Proprietor, and to be obtained only at the
Chinese Collection. 1842.
There is not much Chinese about the fabrique. It has a dragon on the pinnacle, which was easy to miss in 2013 (Fig. 4), but must be much more conspicuous now that it has been gilded (Fig. 13). It has the double concave roof with solid upturned eaves that seems to have been particularly favoured in England as a signifier of Chinese buildings. There are upturns at the corners, but these are not true Chinese upturned eaves, but simply wooden scrolls that pick up the concavity of the roof (Fig. 14). Bells hang from these, as in the Nanking pagoda in Nieuhoff (Fig. 15).
Fig. 13. Wrest Park, 2016. Dragon finial restored (Butler).
Fig. 14. Wrest Park 2013. Eave scroll with bell.
Fig. 7. Nieuhoff, the Porcelain Pagoda, Peking. Engraving.
Chinoiserie
Frets
There is fretwork, only a few pieces of which are in any way Chinese. The point of Chinese fretwork is that it provides the opportunity to create regular or irregular geometrical patterns, preferably complicated, that lack members that continue from one edge from another, except around the edges. In other words, if you follow a piece it will almost always stop short before very long. The pieces are often at right angles to each other, with some at 45 degrees or diagonals, but need not be; indeed, there is quite a tradition in English Chinoiserie for quite odd angles, as in Paul Decker’s series of etchings, which deserve further study (Fig. 16).[1] These must be inspired, if not modelled on, similar plates in Chippendale’s director, which came out in 1754 (further edition 1755 and 1762) (Fig. 17).[2] What is unclassical about these designs is that there is no regular grid underlying the design, unlike a Greek meander (Fig. 18).[3] This is what makes them unsatisfactory to the classically-trained eye, and helps provide the subversive element necessary to Chinoiserie.
Fig. 16. Decker, Chinese fret gates.
Fig. 17. Chippendale. Chinese fret gates.
Fig. 18. Greek fret (meander).
Decker’s designs for railings are a little
like Serlio’s designs for garden squares: they are much too complicated
actually to be made. Indeed, the Chinoiserie fret is a genre almost entirely
devoid of structural thought. How on earth is one meant to join all these short
sections of square-section wood? In furniture, perhaps, but as gates or fencing
panels they would distort in no time, and have no resistance to side impacts.
If you tried to make them today you would use welded square tube, or else last
cut them from a flat sheet of metal, which would make them as tacky as those
laser-cut decorative panels you can buy at Bunnings.
Consequently the nearest thing to a Chinese
fret at Wrest Park, the rails at the side, are made of metal: they look to be
square section steel tube, and are surely modern (2013) (Fig. 19). In the 2016 photos they appear to be unchanged. Would the
originals have been of wrought iron or wood? Their pattern seems to follow what
we see in the watercolour (Fig. 3a),
but this is not quite clear enough in the reproduction. The pattern is a fairly
timid Chinese fret: it is made on a not-quite regular grid: the horizontal
divisions are equal, but the vertical divisions are not quite regular (Fig. 20). This suggests that it was
designed by starting with the three posts which are set at an unconsidered
distance from the side walls, making regular horizontal divisions, dividing the
second and fourth rows half way between the posts, then setting the outer verticals
within the posts to make the width of the vertical panels the same as the
horizontal ones. The outer vertical panels are three horizontal bays high, the
inner only two, but alternated across the centre post to give the only note of
vitality to the pattern.
Fig. 19. Wrest Park, 2013. Railing.
Fig. 20. Wrest Park, 2016. Railing, as diagram.
The band of ‘frets’ below the upper roof (Figs 21, 22, 23) is more meander that
Chinese fret, and looks a bit like a complex Greek fret or swastika meander (Fig. 18),[4]
but it isn’t. Nor does it have the syntax of Chinese frets. The basic idea is a
rectangular U-shape that faces alternately up and down, with stems. This leaves
negative shapes that are either rectangular S-shapes, reverse S-shapes, or
simple bars. The designer basically drew a series of equally spaced vertical
lines, and six equally spaced horizontal lines, the spacing in both directions
being the same.
Fig. 21. Wrest Park, 2016. Restored upper fretwork (Butler).
Fig. 22. Wrest Park, 2013. Upper fretwork.
Fig. 23. Wrest Park, upper fretwork, diagram.
The ‘frets’ below the main roof consist of
alternating wide rectangles and circles that in the outer bays become vertical
rectangles and ovals, as if being squeezed (Fig. 24).
Fig. 24. Wrest Park, 2013. Lower fretwork.
The other pseudo-fret is on the filled
walls panels of the outer bays (Fig. 25)
which are filled with an applied rectangle of pale blue and an interlaced
hexagon (or hexagon and square) pattern.
Fig. 25. Wrest Park, 2013. Panel ornament.
Function
and Decker
The function of the building is clearly
that of a ‘summerhouse’: a place to sit in shade within the garden with an
outlook, in this case to the stream and presumably the original Chinese bridge.
Typologically some sources call it a Chinese ‘temple’, as do the restorers, while
writers today often call it a Chinese ‘house’.
Decker’s first volume of Chinoiserie designs (Chinese Architecture, Civil and Ornamental, 1759)[5] is strong on typological labels. Plate 2, a ‘Royal Garden Seat’ (Fig. 26) bears a certain resemblance to the Wrest Park building, but is more truly a framed seat, like a baroque throne room baldacchino. What is interesting here is how there is a focus on a framed picture above the seat, which is not the case at Wrest where the regular vertical panels prevail, but it must be remembered that there were once pictures of some kind (see above). In plate 7 (Fig. 27) Decker shows a ‘Summer House’, a ‘Repository’ (i.e, a storage shed) a ‘Temple’ and a ‘Garden Seat’. The ‘temple’ and ‘depository’ are variations on the theme of the enclosed octagonal pavilion, while the ‘garden seat’ is open on all sides and again has the throne-room-with-baldacchino focus on the seat back. The summer house is a bit hard to read, but seems to be a enclosed space with a front door and a kind of colonnade or veranda at the sides. Plate 8 (Fig. 28) shows an ‘Umbrellod Seat’ and a Garden Temple’ while Plate 9 (Fig. 29) shows an ‘Alcove’, all of which are variations on the baldacchino-seat idea.
Fig. 26, Decker, plate 2.
Fig. 27, Decker, plate 7.
Fig. 28, Decker, plate 8.
Fig. 29, Decker, plate 9.
Plate 10 (Fig. 30) is the ‘Summer Dwelling of a Chief Bonzee or Priest’,
which is closest to the summer house idea, being an enclosed space with a wide
opening at the front and seats at the back, but the caption has it wandering
into the genre of representations of historical Chinese buildings (rather than,
as with the other examples, the representation of English garden buildings in
Chinoiserie style), as well as the hermit’s grotto (the thatched roof), and
there are some Rococo C-scrolls and shell forms as well. All-in-all, the Wrest
Park structure is not a very good fit with Decker’s typologies, but in Decker’s
terms it is more of a ‘garden seat’ (open at the sides, with a seat at the back
for looking out from) than a ‘Summer House’ or ‘Summer Dwelling’, which for
Decker is more enclosed. One gets the idea that Jemima and Decker are not on
the same page, even though Decker’s plates were hot from the press a year or so
before she started work. Indeed, compared to Decker the Wrest Park design is
rather dull and fails to fully exploit the possibilities of fantasy that
Chinoiserie permits.
Fig. 30, Decker, plate 10.
Chinese
Beds
Another possible inspiration is a Chinese
bed. One appears in Langdon’s 1840 catalogue as ‘a Chinese bedstead’ (no. 1271,
between pages 140 and 141, text on p. 140, Fig.
31) and it resembles a little the Wrest Park fabrique.[6] Could
the designer have been thinking of something like this?
Fig. 31. Chinese bed (Langdon).
And what about Chambers (see above)? Are there useful stylistic or typological connections with the illustrations in Chambers’ Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils, published in 1757, shortly before the building of the Wrest Park fabrique? The answer is: no. Chambers’ designs are far too solid, and even when fanciful or inaccurate are informed with his experience of actual Chinese buildings. They are not Chinoiserie.
[2]
Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and
Cabinet-maker’s Director: Being a Large Collection of . . . Designs of
Household Furniture in the Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste …, London,
1754.
[3]
Complex Greek meander, from Abraham Swan, The
British Architect, 1758, plate LV (detail).
[4]
Complex Greek meander, from Abraham Swan, The
British Architect, 1758, plate LV (detail).
[5] Paul Decker, Chinese Architecture, Civil and Ornamental, London, 1759. 23 plates
plus a frontispiece. Each plate etching and engraving, 23 x 28.2 cm. V&A
E.6618-1905.
[6]
Langdon, 1840, no. 1271, between pages 140 and 141, text on p. 140: ‘Chinese bedstead, furniture, &c.
Specimens of Chinese furniture are abundantly displayed in this collection; the
beds of the Chinese, in general, are composed of mats, placed on two or three
boards, laid on forms or benches, and covered with a canopy, supported by
bamboo sticks of silk gauze or cotton curtains, and a musquito net in the
summer. Various kinds of bamboo pillows are also exhibited.’
The relationship between the Chinese fabrique
she built and Wrest Park and the 20th century structures is not
completely clear to me. Apparently the stone base is original,[1]
but Conner writes that ‘the pavilion survived (although as a ruin in its last
years) until the 1950s. According to the 2011 guidebook it was rebuilt in the 1940s
and restored again.[2]
Was it rebuilt again in the 1970s? Conner
notes that at the time of writing (his book was published in 1979) the
Department of the Environment was replacing it ‘with an identical pavilion,
albeit with fibreglass roofs’. This is presumably the structure that I saw, but
I could not see any fibreglass. The implication is that nothing apart from the
base of that version was original. The 2016 version will be explored below.
The only contemporary view, reproduced by Conner (Fig. 38, p. 68) (Fig. 3a), is a watercolour which his caption says comes from the sketchbook of Jemima’s great-nephew, the 1st Earl de Grey. Who was he exactly? It can only be the 2nd Earl de Grey, who was Thomas Philip de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey, 3rd Baron Grantham and 6th Baron Lucas, KG, PC, FRS (1781–1859). He was the eldest son of Jemima’s younger daughter, Mary. The Marquesate Grey expired with Jemima’s death in 1797, and was revived as the earldom of de Grey (not Grey) for her eldest daughter Amabel Hume-Campbell, who was in 1816 created 1st Countess de Grey, with the earldom passing to her male line. This meant that, since she was childless, it passed to the eldest son of her sister Mary Jemima, who had married Thomas Robinson, 2nd Baron Grantham. It would be good to have more information about this sketchbook.
Fig. 3a. Drawing by Earl de Grey. Fig. 3b. Fabrique in 2013 from the same angle.
Apart from being a politician the 2nd
Earl de Grey was an amateur architect and designed the new Wrest Park house
(1833-39) when he inherited in 1833; he was first president of the Institute of
British architects in 1834. The literature on Earl de Grey includes: The Earl de Grey’s account of the building
of Wrest House, History of Wrest House, introduction by A. F. Cirket, The
Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, Volume 59, pp. 65–87, Bedford 1980; and
Charles Read, Earl de Grey, London
2007. Susan Jenkins, ‘Cherubs and Chintz: among the triumphs of the 1830s
restoration of Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, was the sitting room of the Countess
de Grey. Today, her remarkable interior scheme can be pieced together through
scraps of evidence, revealing the tastes of the house’s former owners’, Apollo, vol. 173 June 2011, pp. 70–76.
This is mainly about the redecoration of the Countess’s bedroom, especially
chintzes, but has something about the cherubs in the ceiling roundels.
The watercolour has slightly more vertical
proportions, and looks less like a shed. Fig.
3b shows the view in 2013 from a similar angle, corrected somewhat for
parallax using the distant view from the 19th century bridge (see below). This shows that the
draftsman has slightly exaggerated its verticality. The base has not changed.
In its details the drawing corresponds well with the 1979 version, which would
have made use of this drawing. Differences include:
(a) The orientation of the dragon finial (Fig. 4) is reversed.
Fig. 4. Wrest Park fabrique, 2013. Dragon finial.
(b) The lower rectangular panel, like the
rest of the trim, is painted Indian red, but it is not clear whether the
draftsman shows this.
(c) The most interesting difference is the
treatment of the roof sheeting. In 2013 the roof, judging from my photos,
consists of single pieces of sheet metal, presumably galvanised steel. There is
talk somewhere of fibreglass, but from the way the edges are folded I find it
is difficulty to believe that this refers to the roof. But perhaps it is, with
metal flashing at the eaves? The watercolour shows vertical seams, which is how
the 2016 restoration does it, using long strips of copper. However, unlike the
2016 restoration in the watercolour shows the seams at the upper edge of each
roof section splitting into v-shapes, with a band of diamonds across the middle
of the upper sections. I imagine this could be done using pieces of copper with
ridges and foldovers, but it is interesting that the 2016 restoration does not
attempt this. Possibly in the original this pattern was created more
decoratively, but I doubt it.
Photographs taken before the 1950s would be
useful here to show the original structure but there do not seem to be any.
The Fabrique
in 2013
The Wrest Park fabrique in 2013 was not in good condition. The structure is basically made of sticks: that is, what look to be 4 inch (90-100 mm) square posts (they could be larger as I did not measure them) (Fig. 5). The colouring was cream, with a burnt sienna red trim and some pale blue. The roof (Fig. 6) was a curved sheet of some kind, which might be the fibreglass referred to above, but where it is folded over at the edge it must surely be metal. Is this flashing, or was the roof actually metal and the business about fibreglass a hum? There was no visible internal roof structure (Fig. 7). There was a band of fretwork that acted as the vertical ‘wall’ below the top roof which was open to the inside. Above this is a flat ceiling with what looks like sheets of plywood with cover strips. The plane of the fretwork continues downwards to box in the lower roof. My initial reaction to this was that it was rather dull and routine, suggesting that the designer had lost interest in the Chinoiserie theme and was just finishing it off as best they could (assuming that it follows the original design). However, while working through another design I realised that these double roofs are not so easy to construct. It is difficult to fit a set of continuous rafters into such a shape, and it is much easier to run horizontal rafters at the lower roof level, and then built up the upper section with vertical walls corresponding to the plan of the upper roof, which is what has been done here. Nevertheless, in the 2013 version not attempt has been made to enliven this structure so that it has any interior interest. (The 2016 renovation follows the same structure, but I have no images to show the finishes of the ceilings.)
Fig. 5. Wrest Park, 2013. Ornament on front panel.
Fig. 6. Wrest Park, 2013. Roofs.
Fig. 7. Wrest Park, 2013. Ceilings.
There are five bays across the front, the four outer bays having are the same narrow width, the outermost ones filled (Fig. 8). The next thin bays are open, as is this the central bay, which is about 2.5 times the width of the outer bays, totalling 6.5 bays. The back walls is again sticks 4 inches square with panelling between, a total of 6 bays which as a result makes each bay slightly wider than the front bays.
Fig. 8. Wrest Park 2013. Frontal view showing bay articulation.
The
2016 Restoration
The temple was restored again, most thoroughly, in 2016 (Figs 9-12). This is illustrated with very informative photos on the website of the company that did the work, T. Butler and Co., although the text is mainly about their virtues in the OHS department. http://www.t-butler.co.uk/project/wrest-park-chinese-temple/ This tells us that the cost of the restoration was £65,000.[3] The photos show that there was a fair amount of rot at the corners, and that the pre-2016 rafters were shaped from a red-coloured wood, but one seems to be of plywood (Fig. 9). Another photo (Fig. 10) shows a similar red wood, probably the same timbers, but the one at the corner has been built up with what looks like treated pine. Then (Fig. 11) they added shaped eaves from what looks like treated pine, with plywood (6 mm?) butted up to this and screwed to the rafters. For the metal cladding they went the whole hog and used sheet copper with ridge seams (Fig. 12). This provides no opportunity for the patterning seen in the watercolour (see above). The use of this material is almost certainly unhistorical.
Fig. 9. Wrest Park, 2016. Roof decay.
Fig. 10. Wrest Park, 2016. Roof ribs.
Fig. 9. Wrest Park, 2016. Main roof plywood.
Fig. 9. Wrest Park, 2016. Roofs clad in copper sheet.
[2]
From website http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/wrest-park/history/:
‘In the early 18th century
Anthony’s son, Henry, Duke of Kent (1671–1740), laid out what is now Wrest’s
most exceptional feature, its massive formal woodland garden, enclosed on three
sides by canals. He employed leading architects and garden designers –
including Nicholas Hawksmoor, Thomas Archer, Batty Langley and William Kent –
to create an ordered landscape of woodland avenues ornamented with statuary and
garden buildings. These included Thomas Archer’s baroque pavilion,
with its trompe l’œil paintings by Louis Hauduroy.
On the duke’s
death his granddaughter Jemima, Marchioness Grey (1723–97), inherited the
estate. She showed a keen interest in the gardens. In 1758 she brought in
‘Capability’ Brown, a leader of the new English landscape style of the time, to
soften the edges of the garden and remodel the park, while preserving the heart
of the formal layout. Brown himself realised that to do more ‘might unravel the
Mystery of the Gardens’. His work is commemorated by the ‘Capability’ Brown
column, built for Jemima by Edward Stevens. Jemima also added a
Chinese temple and bridge, the Mithraic altar and a bath house.’
[3] T.
Butler and Co. website: ‘This project was to refurbish the Chinese Temple at
English Heritage’s Wrest Park Site. Whilst a relatively small job, it had
several challenging elements, in the detailed bespoke carpentry aspect of the
work and the logistics of working on the Wrest Park Site.
Located within the large grounds of
Wrest Park, which is open to the public for most of the year, one of the key
challenges was ensuring the safety of the public and EH Staff. We achieved this
by ensuring that the work area was at all times fenced and segregated, all site
staff understood that even though the site seemed remote, gates were to be kept
shut and protection in place at all times. All site deliveries were planned and
programmed, delivery vehicles were met offsite by a banks-man and escorted through
the grounds.
We were able to ensure that all
vehicles driven to the work area followed site rules (speed and weight
restrictions). Detailed planning of deliveries ensured that vehicle traffic
through the publicly accessed grounds was kept to bare minimum.
Whilst carry out this contract, other
Contractors were undertaking a major project to relay access paths, including
the access to our site. We were required to minimise the impact our works had
on this project by planning, coordination and cooperation. We ensured that both
contractors could safely work around each other – both projects finished
successfully.’
Wrest Park has an interesting Chinoiserie fabrique (Fig. 1) which is of interest because it has recently been restored (not for the first time) which allows us to come to grips with the structure. I examined it in June 2013 shortly before the restoration of 2016, which is documented in photos on the restorer’s website. I have not yet found a publication arising from this.
The most useful account I have found is in
Patrick Conner’s Oriental Architecture in
the West, London: Thames and Hudson, 1979, a book that I have found to be
extremely useful and reliable (pp. 68–70).
The sources he cites are letters between
Jemima Grey and Lady Gregory of 5 July 1748, 4 September 1748, 25 July 1760, 13
June 1781, and letter of Elizabeth Anson to Jemima Grey 20 August 1750, all in
the Bedfordshire County Record Office; Joyce Godber, The Marchioness Grey of Wrest Park, Bedfordshire Historical Record
Society, 1968, The Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society;
v. 47 (State Library of Victoria, Storage. S 942.56 B39P). Joyce Godber is also
the author of History of Bedfordshire
1066-1888, Luton, Bedfordshire County Council, 1969. Also Harris, Chambers (see below).
Jemima Grey, née Campbell (1722–1797) was
the only child of John Campbell, 3rd Earl of Breadalbane, and granddaughter and
heiress of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent (1671–1740), the creator of Wrest Park. In 1740
Jemima was married to Philip Yorke (1720–1790), son of the 1st Earl
of Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor. Hardwicke died a fortnight later, following
which Jemima succeeded by a special remainder in her own right as Marchioness
Grey, as well as being Countess of Hardwicke and heir to Wrest Park.[1]
Philip and Jemima, who were then very
young, travelled a lot around England, recording their impressions in letters
and diaries. They saw the Chinese pavilions at Studley Royal (1744, 1755),
Stowe (1748), Wroxton (1748), Richard Bateman’s house (before 1756) and
Shugborough (on several occasions).
Through this ‘the marchioness in particular
developed firm opinions on style and arrangement’.[2]
She was dissatisfied with the classical fabriques at Stowe, finding that the
park lacked ‘Variety and Surprise’ and the buildings were too ‘heavy’. She particularly
liked Gibb’s Gothic fabrique and the ‘Chinese Room’ (the one now returned
there), which she wrote was ‘the prettiest I have seen, & the Only One like
the Drawings and Prints of their Houses’ although ‘it stands in a dirty Piece
of Water’.[3]
By 1758 they tackled the gardens at Wrest
Park, employing Capability Brown.[4] They
also built a Mithraic altar, a bath house and a
‘Capability’ Brown column, which was built by Edward Stevens. Conner points out that Jemima was in the vanguard of taste‘ and ‘her
ideals prevailed in many landscape gardens of the 1750s and 1760s’. By
1756 she was ‘almost tired of the
Chinese’ and favoured the Gothic of Strawberry Hill.
Interestingly, she made a distinction
between Gothic and Chinese in terms of scale. Criticising ‘Dickie’ Bateman’s
Park at Old Windsor, she found the scale of his Gothic to be too small:
One could suppose Oneself before in a
Chinese Baby-House, but can never be reconciled to a Gothic One’. … [Gothic
should be] more Great & Solid & Awfull & Magnificent’.[5]
This is an important distinction:
Chinoiserie cannot be sublime. Gothic was strongly associated with vast
cathedrals and abbeys and their ruins: it is about religious emotion,
sublimity, and the past. Chinoiserie, by contrast, belongs in the present and is
imprecise in its associations. It had connotations of extravagant inventive
fantasy that the Gothic lacks.
Conner, citing Godber, states that in
September 1761, ‘when the external paintwork was completed’ Jemima sent
instructions for the painter to begin work on the interior: ‘[a]nd he may begin
first with the yellow paper .. which he knows should not be made deeper than a
straw colour …’.[6] It would be good to have the whole passage. This is in Godber perhaps? Harris
also states that the sources call it a ‘Chinese Temple’, but this needs to be
confirmed. (Conner calls it a Chinese House.)
William
Chambers
The Wrest Park fabrique is supposed to have
been designed by Sir William Chambers. It gets an entry in John Harris’s 1970
monograph (which I have found to be unreliable in a lot of ways),[7] as
‘attributed, c. 1766’. He states that
it ‘was decorated by Peter Falconet between 1766 and 1769’ and that ‘it is
therefore tempting to associate its design with Lord Hardwick’s [that is,
Philip Yorke, 2st Earl of Hardwicke and husband of Jemima Grey] call
to Chambers on 18 May 1767 to come to his town house in St. James’s Square and
“settle with him”’.[8] Conner, however, points out that the documentation indicates that
the fabrique was constructed in 1761, ‘but this does not rule out the
possibility of Chamber’s authorship.’[9]
Perhaps not, but it is why Chambers name was mentioned, and neither Harris nor
anyone else seems to provide stylistic reasons why it should be by Chambers.
Given how involved with fashionable design Jemima was she may not have needed
to outsource the project to a big name like Chambers. Moreover, they employed
Capability Brown, and Chambers was antagonistic towards Brown.[10]
Peter
Falconet
And where does Harris’s statement that it ‘was decorated by Peter Falconet between 1766 and 1769’ come from? It seems that Peter Falconet painted a portrait of Chambers, but what is Harris’s source here? His references are to E. Edwards, Anecdotes of Painting, 1808, p. 40; E. von Erdberg, Chinese Influence in European Garden Structures, 1936, p. 188, fig. 52. It turns out that his source is Edwards, who gives a one-page life of Peter [Pierre-Étienne] Falconet, who was the son of Étienne-Maurice Falconet the famous French sculptor (Fig. 2). Edwards states that ‘[h]e was for some four years in London’ and ‘his name stands in the catalogues of the Exhibitions [of the Incorporated Society of Artists] from 1767 to 1773, soon after which he returned to Paris’. But where does Harris get his date range of 1766 to 1769 from? Edwards is internally contradictory in that in his third paragraph he states that ‘In 1766, he [Falconet] obtained a premium for painting in chiarooscuro, twenty guineas’, which, from the amount, has to have been in England. Does Harris have some other source?
Edwards is hostile towards Falconet as an
historical painter. He states that ‘in 1768, he obtained, for an historical
picture, twenty-six guineas: in this last work, it was evident, that the
extravagant and outré manner of
Monsieur Pierè, who at that time was the fashionable historical painter at
Paris, had tainted the mind of the young Falconet, as it also corrupted the
taste of all the students then in the French Academy’. ‘Monsieur Pierè’ is
Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre (1713–1789), director of the Académie and Premier
Peintre du Roi of painting from 1770, and painter of religious works at
Saint-Sulpice, who was perhaps a bit to Catholic for Edwards.
No-one seems to mention Falconet him as a
decorative artist apart from Edwards. Perhaps Edward Croft-Murray does?
On Falconet at Wrest, Edwards states that
‘[h]e practised sometimes in history, at other times portraits, and also
painted ornaments; of the latter, he left a specimen, in a Chinese temple at
Wrest*, in Bedfordshire’. His asterisked footnote reads ‘Wrest, the seat
of the then Marchioness de Grey, now in the possession of her eldest daughter,
Baroness Lucas, in her own right, the window of Lord Polworth.’
On Falconet, there is an entry in the DNB. L.
H. Cust, revised by Tina Fiske, ‘Falconet, Pierre-Étienne [Peter] (1741–1791)’,
Oxford Dictionary of National Biographyhttps://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9120
Published in print: 23 September 2004. This tells us that he was sent to London
by his father to work under Reynolds in 1765, and went to Saint Petersburg to
join his father (who was working on his equestrian statue there) in 1773. This
entry only refers to his portraits; it makes no reference to Wrest Park or the
decorative painting referred to by Edwards.
Summary
of the Data on the Chinoiserie Fabrique at Wrest Park
What Harris seems to be doing is to
assemble Chambers-related data that clusters around his estimated date of
construction of c. 1766. To those already
mentioned he adds that ‘[i]t may be relevant that Edward Stevens was working at
Wrest in 1770’. He built the Capability Brown column there (Wrest Park
website). Stevens was Chambers apprentice, whom he took on in 1760 (Harris, p.
10.). Harris’s source for this is from someone who consulted the Bedfordshire
Record Office archives, where there is a bill for work on ‘the Cascade Bridge
and the Cold Bath’ on 31 August 1770.
If we cut through all this to the hard
data, what we have is:
(a) there is documentation that in
September 1761 the exterior painting was just complete and decoration of the
interior with yellow paper was beginning. The name of the decorator is not
given. Apparently. It would be good to see the full transcript of this
document.
(b) According to Edwards in 1808, Falconet painted a ‘specimen’ of ‘ornaments’ in ‘a Chinese temple’ at Wrest which must date from between 1765 and 1773. One wonders what this actually means. A ‘specimen’ sounds like a discrete piece or a sample. There is no obvious place for extended decorative work, but if it were a stand-alone panel or something like that it could have gone anywhere, for example on the back wall.
[1] As
she had no male heirs, the title later became extinct upon her own death in 1797,
but her elder daughter was later created Countess de Grey in her own right.
[6]
Conner, 1979, p. 69, citing Godber, 1968, p. 68
[7] Eg
the long demolished Legeay business, and his unsourced drawings …
[8]
John Harris, Sir William Chambers: Knight
of the Polar Star, London: Zwemmer, 1970, cat. 149, p. 254. The rest of the
entry is about other work at Wrest in 1770 on the Cascade Bridge and Cold Bath
by Edward Stevens. Harris cite RIBA letters, Hardwick to Chambers 18 May 1767;
E. Edwards, Anecdotes of Painters,
1808, p. 40; and E. von Erdberg, Chinese
Influence on European Garden Structures, 1936, p. 188, fig. 12.
[10]
John Dixon Hunt, The Picturesque Garden
in Europe, London: Thames and Hudson, 2002, p. 56: ‘Above all, his
[Chambers’] professional, personal and political antagonism to ‘Capability’
Brown ensured that the Chinese mode was seen as an energetic alternative to
Brownian parkland …’. Mind you, Jemima
could clearly reconcile the Chinese mode with employing Brown. Perhaps there is
something in the Capability Brown literature on this?
A garden is both a real place, and a cloud of possibilities. What you will find here will be both something real, and something that may or may not become real. For this reason you will find no map: Instead you will meet fragments, part real, part possible.
The Villa Castagna Daylesford website operates under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 licence. For a summary account of the terms of this license see Creative Commons
Villa Castagna 
The New National Gallery of Victoria Contemporary Design and New Traditional Architecture
The design of the new National Gallery of Victoria Contemporary art gallery has just been announced (Fig. 1). The architects are Angelo Candalepas and Associates. The new building is in addition to the building build by Roy Grounds in 1968, visible in the foreground of the rendering, now NGV International (Fig. 2). The NGV was originally housed in the State Library of Victoria building, now wholly the State Library (Fig. 3).
The original State Library building is a conventional exercise in classicism by Joseph Reed opened in 1856 that looks to the British Museum but without the severity of William Wilkin’s Greek Revival.
The Roy Grounds building owes much to Boullée in the blankness of the entrance façade with its row of high windows under a cornice, and to the Royal Palace at Caserta in its twin courtyard plan. The arched entrance is also Boulléesque. (The water wall behind has become a Melbourne icon.) The arches on the new building are clearly an (overscale, to judge from the rendering) homage to this.
New Traditional Architecture critics generally employ a Puginesque visual rhetoric that opposes good New Traditional Architecture to bad Modernism, an opposition internally visible in the photo of State Library (Fig. 3): between the formal complexity and cultural references of the Library building and the repetitive monotony of the apartment buildings that overlook it.
With the Roy Grounds building matters are more complex, particularly now that it is over 50 years old. Would we have wanted a New Traditional Architecture version of the State Library building in 1968? Would we want it now in the new building? It is significant that the new building is historicising in its own way, in that in using the arch motif it takes it point of visual reference from the old building. This is the only feature of much interest in what is a bland box that wallows in the the repetitive forms of routine modernist architecture, although handled with a purism not possible in a commercial apartment building (Fig. 1).
But such references are subsidiary to other factors. Like most contemporary architecture, the NGV Contemporary building is designed from the inside out; what we see in the rendering it is essentially something that forms a convenient enclosure for a series of showpiece interiors and view-directed spaces. The historical referencing on the outside is tokenistic. New Traditional Architecture, by contrast, is about wholesale historical referencing on the outside, with the result that possibilities for the interior can be quite limited, unless it embraces facadism.The interiors of NGV Contemporary are what the building is all about, each space determined to outdo in spectacle any other such spaces in any building, anywhere.
Culturally, New Traditional Architecture has a strong political component, never articulated by its protagonists, which is a political statement in itself, and it is frequently attacked from a leftward directon. In 1856 Victoria was a British colony attempting to recreate London in the antipodes, hence Reed’s design. In 1968 Victoria was emerging from a strong cultural conservatism (wowserism) into a progressive and increasingly prosperous world led by the US, for which an adventurous modernism, led by local architectural heroes Robin Boyd and Roy Grounds, was the only possible choice. A neo-traditional building was the last thing anyone wanted in 1968. (European New Traditional Architecture, by contrast, is in large part driven by a desire to replace 1960s post WWII reconstructions with something closer to what had been destroyed. It seeks to restore the integrity of disrupted townscapes.)
At the same time, Grounds’ building has none of the purism of hard-line functionalism: it is explicitly a cultural monument with cultural associations, although in formalistic art historical thinking these are sources rather than associations. Significantly, those associations/sources are international (revolutionary France, Royal Naples) because a universalist, albeit Eurocentric, art historical world view prevailed over narrow national associations.
Today the tradition of the 1960s modernists has strengthened, as has local nationalism. Architects in Melbourne that are accepted by the Europeans as New Traditional Architects reference earlier Melbourne architecture, especially that of the first half of the 20th century, such as Neo-Tudor or Art Deco, but never go back to the sources of that architecture, because that would constitutes Eurocentrism, even Cultural Appropriation, rather than being a response to local conditions. In this respect these architects do not differ from the architects of the NGV Contemporary, who would be horrified if they found themselves referencing any non-Modernist architecture from overseas, especially Europe. (Modernist architecture is, by contrast, considered to be universal and immune from nationalism or historicism.) And the references to Art Deco and Neo-Tudor acceptable in domestic architecture would be quite unacceptable in a showpiece public building like the NGV Contemporary. But referencing the local modernist tradition (Roy Grounds’ arches) is acceptable. Referencing French Revolutionary Boullée, however, is not, even though this was Grounds’ source.
There is little doubt the the NGV Contemporary design would not fare well in a New Traditional Architecture critique. And not without reason. It is a building that has lost its moorings. High Modernist architecture of the more adventurous kind, such as Grounds’ NGV, Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp, and above all Joern Utson’s Sydney Opera House, presents C coherent, often exciting image. This is because they are designed from the outside in. While this presented problems in the case of the Sydney Opera House, the result was a building that is, in the contemporary cliché, iconic: it presents an image that is memorable. NGV Contemporary completes fails to do this. A few token Groundsian arches do not an architectural image make. It is a building that appears to be designed from the inside out by committee, with the result that as an object it is a mess.