Notes & Queries
John Harris, ‘Not Morattico’, 175–178
Hannah Waugh, ‘William Talman in London: the Remodelling of Berkeley House’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xVIII, 2010, pp. 179–180
Martin Goalen, ‘Lord Lyttleton’s “True Attick Building” at Hagley Hall: Temple or Portico?’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xVIII, 2010, pp. 181–184
Richard Hewlings, ‘The Originality of James Hoban’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xVIII, 2010, pp. 185–190
John Harris, ‘An East Anglian Gothic Conundrum’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xVIII, 2010, pp. 191
text © the authors 2010 NOT MORATTICO
JOHN HARRIS
n order to attempt to solve for a second time what York River near Colonial Williamsburg. The Imight be called the problem of the ‘Morattico overmantel painting in the Morattico Room is such a Panel’ (Fig. ), a preamble is necessary. In rarity in Colonial America, that it can only be Henry Francis du Pont bought painted panelling paralleled by the four overmantels in Holly Hill, from Morattico in the Rappahannock River Valley in Maryland, one of which depicts Holly Hill. This fact Richmond County, Virginia, when the house was has encouraged historians to speculate that the demolished in . This had been built by Colonel house in the Morattico panel could be American, Charles Grymes, who married Frances Jennings, a and Waterman suggested that it might be Rippon daughter of Edmund Jennings, who was born in Hall, but it is not. The purpose of this admittedly England in , and ‘came to America at an early tentative article is to suggest an alternative reason for age’, maybe in , but this is uncertain. Frances the overmantel than the belief that it represents a was reputedly born in Ripon, Yorkshire, but it is family record of an improbable American house. more likely that she was born at Rippon Hall on the I believe the overmantel to be a memory picture
Fig. . A detail of the Morattico overmantel painting, showing the warehouses at Hull and the house, Jennings Hall, Silsden. Winterthur Museum and Country Estate, Delaware.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII NOT MORATTICO commemorating the emigration of the Jennings Palazzi di Genova ( ), exerted some influence, family to America from their seat at Jennings Hall, certainly for the roof works above the main cornice Silsden, Yorkshire. They would have sailed from and the ornamental chimneys, but no more than that. Hull, about sixty miles on the coach road from The tall three and a half storey cube of eight by Silsden. The principal of the family and the father three bays, embellished on the front with attached of Edmund Jennings was Sir Edmund Jennings columns almost looking like colonnades, is ( – ) of Ripon, Yorkshire, who is described as unprecedented, and is so idiosyncratic that it could educated at Silsden before after when he never have been invented as a capriccio. The roof entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Silsden works are not unlike those at Wisbech Castle, was obviously a country seat of the Jennings family, Cambridgeshire, built for the Parliamentarian John in contrast to their house in the market town of Thurloe, and Jennings Hall shares with other Ripon, about forty miles away. What is shown by the Artisan Mannerist houses the fashion for a balcony unknown painter, with obvious topographical over the front door. inexactitude, is, from right to left of the painting, a In Mr J.A. Booth corresponded with me grouping of typical seventeenth-century maritime about a possible connection between Jennings Hall warehouses that I suggest is Hull, then the astonishing and Arthington Hall, about twenty miles away, Jennings Hall, and in the background a distant view eastwards towards Leeds. Of Arthington, Ralph of a Tudor palace or ecclesiastical building. On the Thoresby wrote in his diary under August : River Humber are two sailing vessels with English ‘Had also a view of the noble edifice at Arthington flags, and on its banks a windmill. built by the ingenious Cyril Arthington, Esq. F.R.S., No lost English house can exceed the curiosity of Lord of the manor of Arthington’. In Ralph Jennings Hall, of which the only descriptive comment Thoresby’s Ducatus Leodiensis, reference is made is by Thomas Whitaker, the historian of Craven, who that Arthington had been inherited from Henry wrote in , à propos Silsden: ‘Nearby was a Arthington in , and that Cyril Arthington mansion house, called Jennings Hall with a ‘erected a noble Hall … and furnish’d it with water considerable estate held under the chief lord of the conveyed in Pipes of Lead from an Engine he has family called Jennings who about a century ago [i.e. contrived at his Mill upon the river Wharf, being an c. ] sold their property here to the Earl of Thanet , ingenious Gentleman, and well seen in hydrostatics’. and removed to Ripon’. This statement obviously It was presumably designed c. –, and the date authenticates the origin of the colonial name Rippon of the building can now be narrowed down, since Hall. It is likely that with the death of Sir Edmund’s Cassandra Willoughby saw it unfinished in July first son, the unmarried Jonathan, in , and with . She was intrigued by its uncommon his second son established in Virginia, Silsden had architecture, and wrote: become redundant, and hence was sold. ‘Saw Mr Arthington’s House, which when Even from what we know of seventeenth-century finished will be a very pretty Seat, one Front [south] English houses, nothing compares to Jennings Hall. is Built after a manner new to me, which looks pretty Stylistically, it could have been designed at any and must be very convenient, there is as I remember time between and , bearing in mind that windows, of which jet out about or yards, Sir Edmund had been in the Cavalier Parliament. and between each of those windows, before the other It conforms in some ways to that classification of windows which lye behind is a Stone Pillar which Parliamentary architectural style invented by Sir supports a building like Balconies, into which open John Summerson as Artisan Mannerism. Rubens’s Sash doors from the Sides of the windows which
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII NOT MORATTICO
Fig. . Arthington Hall, Yorkshire, north front. J. Jones, History and Antiquities of Harewood ( ) p. .
jet out, and when all those doors are open, those little It is uncertain when Arthington was demolished. closets or dressing rooms, with the Balconies make a The present house is seemingly a nineteenth-century very pleasant Gallery, beside it is a very convenient encasing around a house built by John Carr in the passage from one room to another without making s and s. It preserves an intriguing relic of any of the Bed Chambers a through fair’. Cyril Arthington’s novel house, a single Tuscan The effect of the triangular windowed bays must column embedded in a wall. It invites speculation! almost have been Tudor Revival, and on the north front the central pavilion swept forward with concaves, as if in Piedmont (Fig. ). So peculiar is all this that Cyril Arthington may have been as ‘well ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS seen’ in architecture as in hydraulics, for the house I am most grateful for fruitful conversations with looks as alien to the commonalty of design at the Richard Hewlings, and to Susan Newton at the time as was Jennings Hall. Indeed, they have details Winterthur Foundation. in common that may hint that Arthington took details from the Jennings house, such as the attached columns and the Genoese chimney stacks. But there is more to it than this, for over Arthington’s central pavilion the cupola of the roof turret has a flat onion roof as on the cupolas on the Jennings wings.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII NOT MORATTICO
NOTES Thomas D. Whitaker, The History and Antiquities John Harris, The Artist and the Country House of the Deanery of Craven (Leeds : ed.), (revised ed., London, ), pp. , , figs a–b. p. . The statement is clearly inaccurate in This is based upon Thomas Tileston Waterman, suggesting the family had moved their place of The Mansions of Virginia – (Chapel Hill, residence to Ripon, for Sir Edmund Jennings’s ); on Roy Fuch’s paper ‘Virginia Rooms at father (d. ) was also of Ripon. Winterthur’, read to the Association of Virginia Harris, op. cit ., pl. . Antiquities, March , ; and on an Object Now the Reverend Booth, to whom I am most Report ( . ) by Catharine Christie Dann- grateful. Roeber dated July . I am most grateful to the Ralph Thoresby, Diary , ed. J. Hunter (London, staff at Winterthur for their advice. ), I, p. , but see also D.H. Atkinson, Ralph Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography. Richmond, VA Thoresby the Topographer; his Town and Times (www.ancestry.com). (Leeds, ), II, p. . – . A view of this was drawn by Lefevre James Thoresby, Ducatus Leodiensis … or the Topography Cranstone in (Virginia Historical Society). of … Leedes ( ), p. . For Henry Arthington Waterman, op. cit ., pp. , , . He did not know ( – ), see Basil Duke Henning, The House of then of the VHS document. Commons – (London, ), I, pp. –, E. Cruikshanks, S. Handley and D. Hayton, for his cousin Cyril ( c. – ), Eveline The History of Parliament: The House of Commons Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D.W. Hayton, – , (Cambridge, ), IV, p. . The House of Commons – (Cambridge, ). This would have been Thomas Tufton, sixth Earl of See Elizabeth Hagglund, ‘Cassandra Willoughby’s Thanet and Lord de Clifford, who was Lord Visits to Country Houses’, Georgian Group Lieutenant of Westmorland and Cumberland, and Journal, XI ( ), p. and figs –. died in .
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII WILLIAM TALMAN IN LONDON: THE REMODELLING OF BERKELEY HOUSE
HANNAH WAUGH
escribed in as ‘a Model of what might be designs of Hugh May ( – ), Comptroller of the Ddone in after Ages’, the great rebuilding of the King’s Works, Architect to Windsor Castle, and a south and east fronts of Chatsworth House, figure described by Colvin as ‘one of the two or three Derbyshire, in – was carried out by William men who determined the character of English Talman ( – ) for William Cavendish, fourth domestic architecture after the Restoration’. Earl – and, as created in , the first Duke – of A brick structure characterised by quadrant Devonshire. During this period, Talman also wings and a centrepiece of stone Corinthian pilasters provided his patron with plans for a London and pediment, the Duke’s arrival brought few residence, albeit unexecuted, at Lamb’s Conduit changes to the exterior fabric of the original building. Fields. However, it has not previously been recorded The contemplated addition of a cupola was not to be that he was further consulted by the Duke with followed through. However, in spite of the Duke’s regard to the remodelling of Berkeley House, being immediately challenged, and eventually sued, by Piccadilly. Purchased by the latter in March , Lord Normanby as to the legality of his acquisition, Berkeley House had been erected in to the alterations to the interior of the house proceeded throughout the forthcoming months: ‘thou wee are not sure to keepe ye house have not less then men at work in pulling up floare &c’, as it was reported that September. In addition to this relaying of the floors, the remodelling comprised the introduction of new wainscoting: ‘wee have in the new house Good appartments and a larg Dineing Roome and yet not one of them wainscotted’, as Aaron Kinton recounted; the addition of closets and subsidiary rooms to the principal apartments; and the creation of a painted stair. The residence was also discovered to have ‘little convenience for servants’, and it was probably as a result of this that a new building, rising two floors in height, was by October being constructed towards the rear of the site. Much of the work was to be executed by craftsmen likewise employed by the Duke in Derbyshire. Berkeley House, Portugal Street, detail from Joinery was carried out under the direction of Lobb, John Strype (ed.), Survey of London ( ). almost certainly the Henry Lobb responsible for
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII WILLIAM TALMAN IN LONDON much of the wainscoting at Chatsworth, whilst the NOTES painting of the ‘ passages one each side the Great White Kennet, A Sermon Preach’d at the Funeral hall’ and the walls, ceiling and spring of the stairway of the Right Noble William Duke of Devonshire , (London, ), p. . was entrusted to Louis Laguerre. The stair was Devonshire MSS., Chatsworth, Whildon Coll. further embellished with plaster details of ciphers B.V. and C. –C. A. and arms. The most interesting connection with the Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of Chatsworth workforce is, however, this reappearance British Architects – (New Haven and of William Talman, for relations between the Duke London, ), p. . Aaron Kinton to James Whildon, September and his architect are generally understood to have , Whildon Coll. C. ; Narcissus Luttrell, gravely deteriorated by , following difficulties at A Brief Relation of Historical Affairs , IV (Oxford, Chatsworth largely occasioned by the shortage of ), p. . The case was settled in favour of the money. Regarding Berkeley House, Talman’s Duke in December . opinions are relayed on proposed alterations to the Aaron Kinton to James Whildon, loc. cit. family apartments, and on details ranging from the John Whildon to James Whildon, March , Whildon Coll. B.V. . quality of the materials to the height of a chimney, Aaron Kinton to James Whildon, October , and the preferred position of an exterior clock. Whildon Coll. C. ; ‘Vertue – IV’, Walpole Society , ‘The Stair-Case, the Apartments and Gardens, XXIV ( –), p. . are all suitable to the Grandeur of the late Duke who See Francis Thompson, A History of Chatsworth finished it … [who] had a great Taste in Architecture, (London, ), p. . John Macky, A Journey through England (London, Painting and Furniture, from whence you may ), p. . conclude this a Noble Palace’, John Macky subsequently declared of the house in . The structure of Berkeley House was, however, to be but short-lived. In it was damaged by fire, and thereafter rebuilt as the Devonshire House conceived by William Kent.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII LORD LYTTLETON’S ‘TRUE ATTICK BUILDING’ AT HAGLEY HALL: TEMPLE OR PORTICO?
MARTIN GOALEN
or a tiny building, the Greek Doric belvedere his building a temple. In his much quoted letter to Fbuilt from for the first Baron Lyttleton to Mrs Montagu of , he described it as ‘a true Attick a design provided by James Stuart holds an building, a Portico [my emphasis] of six Pillars’, and extraordinary place in the history of architecture: again, in the next year, writing to Sanderson Miller, ‘the earliest monument of the Greek Revival under whose supervision the building was being anywhere in the world’ wrote Pevsner and Lang in erected, he referred to ‘Mr Stuart’s Dorick Portico ’ , a judgement that has survived some sixty years wondering if Stuart had ‘yet sent the Drawings for of architectural history almost intact. Slightly less the Capitals, Frieze, &c.’ By , however, not long secure, however, is Wittkower’s view, from the same after completion, the portico was already being year, that ‘the model for this Doric Hexastyle temple characterised by that famous traveller Dr Pococke, was the Theseum at Athens.’ Lyttleton did not call as ‘the front of the temple of Theseus at Athens’. But Pococke – who was one of the few people in England at that time to have seen the so-called Theseum – had doubts about the authenticity of the imitation, mentioning the profile below the echinus, ‘which I do not remember in the original.’ Doubts over the degree of imitation – reflected in the pages of this journal – have lingered over the years, and, in a recent study of Stuart’s garden buildings, Alexander Marr is succinct and unequivocal:
Stuart’s Doric Temple at Hagley, trumpeted by many as the first example of the true Greek Doric in British architecture, was in fact filtered through Vitruvius’s reconstruction of that Order. The Theseion at Athens, on which Stuart’s temple was based, uses a diameter- to-height ratio for the columns of :. Stuart, however, follows Vitruvius with a ratio of :.
Fig. .The ‘Dorick Portico’ at Hagley Hall, Worcestershire, This view, originating in an article of by Michael by James Stuart, after , with an indication of the Bevington, has been repeated since. However, from column base diameter-to-height ratio. Martin Goalen . inspection (Fig. ), it is clear that the base-to-height
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII LORD LYTTLETON ’ S ‘ TRUE ATTICK BUILDING ’ AT HAGLEY HALL
HAGLEY HALL THE DORIC PORTICO M
Fig. . ‘A Doric Portico at Athens’ after James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, The Antiquities of Athens …, London vol. I, , chap. I, pls. IV and III reproduced to a uniform scale (below), and (above) a hexastyle version of the ‘Doric Portico at Athens’ at the dimensions of the Hagley portico, and drawn to the same scale. Drawing by Martin Goalen . A DORIC PORTICO AT ATHENS M ratio at Hagley is, in fact, very close to : – exactly those of the Theseum, but – as Pococke suspected – that o f ‘A Doric Portico at Athens’ (the western gate to so do the capitals. The unusually prominent banded the Roman Agora, of c. BC ), described in the first collar below the echinus is clearly that of the Agora chapter of Stuart’s first volume (Fig. ). Stuart gate : Stuart’s ‘Doric Portico at Athens’ (Figs. & ). acknowledged that a column proportion of : was It is tempting to think, then, that it was a copy of more slender than any ‘found in the ancient temples Revett’s detail of the order of the Agora gate (Fig. ) of this order now extant’: the Theseum, for instance, that Stuart presented to Lord Lyttleton when is noticeably stubbier, with a base diameter-to-height responding to his request for ‘the Drawings for the ratio of c. :.. Following Vitruvius (V. .), Stuart Capitals, Frieze, &c.’ Only the figured dimensions ascribed this slenderness to the fact of building’s would need amendment (Stuart’s Hagley portico is being secular rather than sacred: a portico rather to that at Athens in a proportion of c. inches to than a temple. ft.), and a change from the tetrastyle of the Agora Not only do the columns at Hagley differ from gate to hexastyle at Hagley is a simple one (Fig. ).
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII LORD LYTTLETON ’ S ‘ TRUE ATTICK BUILDING ’ AT HAGLEY HALL
Fig. .The ‘Dorick Portico’ at Hagley Hall, detail of the ‘Capitals, Frieze, &c’. Martin Goalen .
Fig. . The Orders of the Theseum and of the Doric Portico at Athens reproduced to a uniform scale, after James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, The Antiquities of Athens …, London vol. III, , chap. I, pls. VI (left) & vol I, , chap. I, pl. V (right).
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII LORD LYTTLETON ’ S ‘ TRUE ATTICK BUILDING ’ AT HAGLEY HALL
So Lyttleton’s ‘true Attick building’ turns out exact reproduction of any one building, but … the indeed to be modelled quite precisely on an Athenian Theseum probably inspired it.’ (p. ). The temple that Stuart and his contemporaries knew as the building: not the Theseum as has been suggested so ‘Theseum’, built – BC , is now recognised often, but one that, while predominantly Greek in to have been dedicated not to Theseus but to character, was built at a time when Athens was under Hephaistos: William Bell Dinsmoor, The Roman rule, some four centuries after the golden age Architecture of Ancient Greece (rd. ed., London, of Pericles, and itself something of an archaeological ), p. (and n. ). exercise . . Cited Cousins, op. cit. , p. , where full references to the MS sources are given. . Cited Cousins, op. cit. , p. . . Cited Cousins, op. cit. , p. . Pococke’s A description of the East, and some other countries … ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (London, ) has a (loosely drawn and inaccurate) I am very grateful to Dr Alexander Marr and to plate of the Theseum at part II, plate . Dr Frank Salmon, both of whose generous responses . Cousins, op. cit. , . to my inquiries as to the dimensions of the columns . Alexander Marr, ‘The Garden Buildings’, Susan Weber Soros (ed.), James ‘Athenian’ Stuart at Hagley encouraged me to pursue the questions – : The Rediscovery of Antiquity (New addressed in this note. The work grows out of a Haven and London, ), pp. – , . monograph, Ancient Greece and Modern Architecture . Michael Bevington, ‘The development of the – , to be published this year by Lund classical revival at Stowe’, Architectura (Munich), , Humphries. no. ( ), p. , and recently commented upon, with justified caution, by Frank Salmon in his introduction to the reprint of the first three volumes of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, The Antiquities of Athens … (New York, ), pp. v–xvii, xiii. NOTES . Antiquities , I, Chapter , p. . The ratio of :. is . Nikolaus Pevsner and S. Lang, ‘Apollo or Baboon’, based on the dimensions given by Stuart in Architectural Review (December ), Antiquities ... , III, Chap. , pl. vi. Dinsmoor’s more pp. – , . It would now be more prudent to recent measurements give a proportion of c. :., write ‘the earliest extant monument’: Michael and :. for the corner columns ( , p. ). The Cousins, ‘Athenian Stuart’s Doric Porticoes’, The Parthenon columns have a ratio of c. :. (:. at Georgian Group Journal ( ), pp. – . the corners), idem . . F. Saxl and R. Wittkower, British Art and the . Such anachronism is not uncommon in Greece Mediterranean (Oxford, ), section . Lesley under Roman rule (Dinsmoor, op. cit ., pp. –): Lawrence (‘Stuart and Revett : their literary and the columns of the near-contemporary temple of architectural careers’, Journal of the Warburg and Roma and Augustus on the Acropolis (of c. BC ) Courtauld Institutes , no. ( – ), pp. – , are direct imitations of those of the Erechtheum of had noted that Hagley ‘does not appear to be an – BC (ibid., p. , n. ).
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII THE ORIGINALITY OF JAMES HOBAN
RICHARD HEWLINGS
riginality is not an accolade which has ever been unique is the window on the second floor of Obeen offered to James Hoban, architect of the these elevations, a stilted semi-circle, enclosing what White House, Washington, DC, in . As early as might either be regarded as a piece of bar tracery Benjamin Latrobe characterised the White concentric with the outer arch, or as a single House as ‘not even original, but a mutilated copy of a mullion/transom of stilted semi-circular form. badly designed building near Dublin’. The badly The first of these, only recently identified in designed building was Richard Castle’s Leinster post-Renaissance British architecture, originated in House of , first named as such by David Bailie Syria, proliferated in the Roman Near East, was Warden, writing more sympathetically in , ‘The brought to the west for use in two prominent imperial President’s House … resembles Leinster-House in palaces (Hadrian’s at Tivoli and Diocletian’s at Dublin, and is much admired’. Subsequent critics Split), was drawn by Giulio Romano in –, and have modified and enriched this appraisal in detail, used by Pedro Machuca on the palace of Charles V by also recording resemblances to plates in Gibbs’s at Granada in , by Borromini in the Palazzo Book of Architecture ( ) or Colen Campbell’s Pamphili in Piazza Navona in –, and by Vitruvius Britannicus ( – ). Nevertheless, it has Cortona on the Corso façade of Sta. Maria in Via been consensual to place the White House as a Lata, Rome, in – . It may have been known by design of ‘Palladian’ type, characteristic of Great Inigo Jones, because versions of it were used by Britain over half a century earlier. Although suitable, some of those influenced by him, including Wren on pro tem , for America’s first monarch, such St Mary-at-Hill; but one of Machuca’s drawings for conservatism in was soon to be overwhelmed the palace of Charles V and a copy of Giulio’s by the more hypnotic radicalism of Latrobe. drawing were owned by Lord Burlington, and either From the plan and principal elevation it is may have served as the model for the Syrian serliana difficult to find fault with this verdict. But the east at Firle Place, Sussex, attributable to either Roger and west ends have two features which have never Morris or Colen Campbell. Distant buildings and been mentioned in the extensive scholarly literature rarely seen drawings, however, composed a fine line on the White House, although one is unusual and of influence, and Syrian serlianas are far rarer than the other may even have been unique. The unusual the canonical type, which was easily accessible from feature is in the centre of the first floor of these the pages of Serlio and Palladio. The second of the elevations, a serliana whose detailing is of Syrian two White House window types has never been origin. It differs from the canonical type of serliana in discussed at all, and its precedents are not known. having an entablature which is continuous over all The White House was envisaged as a residence three openings, rather than being broken by the for the head of the republic’s executive branch in arched middle light. The feature which may have ; a competition for drawings was advertised in
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII THE ORIGINALITY OF JAMES HOBAN
Fig. . Samuel Blodgett, junior, sketch of the west end of the White House, Washington DC, before . White House Collection.
April and won by Hoban in July; he altered his Latrobe’s proposals were not carried out, and in a design at President Washington’s desire by October; topographical view made after the fire in August the cornerstone was laid on October ; the exterior (Fig. ) they are easily identifiable by their absence, was reported complete in the fall of ; and it was whereas the two windows are again shown, the first occupied by President Adams in November upper one fire-damaged. There is little cause to . Only two of Hoban’s drawings have been doubt that they were part of Hoban’s design. identified, presumably made between April and Little is known about Hoban’s life before , October , and clearly before the later part of and very little about it before his arrival in America in . These are an elevation of the north front, and . But, as the two window types were apparently a plan of the ground floor; the elevation is irrelevant unprecedented in America, Hoban must have to the present consideration, but the plan at least acquired his knowledge of them, or of some feature shows that Hoban proposed a tripartite window of which inspired them, either from a European some sort on the east and west elevations, and there building or from a picture of one. He was born in is little cause to be sceptical that it is that which Callan, Co. Kilkenny, in about , and studied in exists today. For an elevation drawing of the west the schools of the Dublin Society, where he was side by Samuel Blodgett junior, made before awarded the second premium for his drawings of (Fig. ), shows both of the unusual windows. They ‘brackets, stairs, roofs etc. ’ Thomas Ivory taught in are shown again in a drawing by Latrobe, dated the Dublin Society’s schools, and Hoban must have (Fig. ), which is in part a proposal for alterations and acquired at least his drawing skills from Ivory. might thus be regarded as less reliable evidence. But Hoban described himself as ‘universally acquainted
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII THE ORIGINALITY OF JAMES HOBAN
Fig. . Benjamin Latrobe, elevation of the east end of the White House, Washington DC, with a proposed portico, . Library of Congress. with men of the building line in Ireland, particularly illustrations of Syrian serlianas. In common with with many able Stone Cutters in Dublin with whom most of his generation, he would probably have been I have been concerned in building, as the Royal especially influenced by ancient examples, and one Exchange, New Bank, and Custom House’. of these, Diocletian’s Palace at Split, had been The implication is that he worked on these published by Robert Adam in . Diocletian’s buildings, presumably under Thomas Cooley at the Palace has Syrian serlianas incorporated into a Exchange, Ivory at Newcomen’s Bank, and Gandon continuous blind colonnade on the exterior, and a at the Customs House. It is possible that he acquired giant serliana forming one side of the peristyle. knowledge of the two unusual window types from However, neither of these applications composed a Ivory, Cooley or Gandon, but neither is known to window, as at the White House. But the Syrian feature in any of their work. It has not been suggested that he visited England or any other European country, but this too is possible, and made more likely by his use of these motifs, of which at least the Syrian serliana was visible in England, if only on buildings which were not very well known. Besides the examples already mentioned, there were versions of Syrian serlianas at Hawnes Park, Bedfordshire; around the Turkish Tent in Vauxhall Gardens; on the street front of the White Friars Hotel at Boreham Street, Sussex; on the ends of the wings at Standlynch (now Trafalgar House), Wiltshire; and on the ‘modern Italian loggia’ at Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire. Fig. . View of the White House from the north-east after It was, however, possible for Hoban to have seen the fire of . Library of Congress.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII THE ORIGINALITY OF JAMES HOBAN
William Halfpenny designed a Syrian serliana for the west front of Holy Trinity, Leeds, in , and this was illustrated in Halfpenny’s The Art of Sound Building in , exactly the sort of book which a carpenter with architectural ability like Hoban might have taken to start a career across the Atlantic. These illustrations may be rare, but illustrations of the other window type appear to be non-existent. It may be Hoban’s own invention. Some components or partly realised versions of it were recorded by Palladio, and were illustrated in Lord Burlington’s Fabbriche Antiche. Plate in this, an elevation of the Baths of Diocletian, shows, among much else, what we now call the ‘Diocletian window’, a semi-circle with two mullions; it also shows a serliana within a concentric relieving arch; and another version of the latter in which the relieving arch is stilted. The first of these is the generic model. The upper part alone of the second of them would give a window like that on the second floor of the White House. Corrected in the light of the third of them, it would give a near- exact model. It is not clear from Burlington’s, and even Palladio’s, drawings whether these openings were really open, glazed, or blind. The first of them had been reproduced by Burlington himself, glazed. So had the second, the serliana glazed, but the surface between the two concentric semi-circles blind. But Robert Taylor had developed the formula by glazing Fig. . Giovanni Giacomo Rossi, east elevation the entire opening, first in the Court Room and West of Sta Maria in Via Lata, Rome . Quadrangle of the Bank of England ( – ), then in the kitchen of Thorncroft Manor, Leatherhead (after ; before ), and finally in the kitchen of serliana at Sta Maria in Via Lata (Fig. ) framed a No Downing Street ( –) (Fig. ). Hoban first-floor loggia, more easily transformable into a could have arrived at his window design by omitting window. It had been illustrated in at least three the lower part of Taylor’s windows. Those at the publications before Hoban’s departure for America, Bank of England might have been known to him once, by Rossi, in detail. As a Catholic, Hoban from the younger Thomas Malton’s illustrations, would not have been as hesitant in transferring the published in , the year in which Hoban designed details of an ostentatious Counter-Reformation the White House. church as his Protestant contemporaries might have Further investigation of Hoban’s pre-American been. Not that the latter were entirely inhibited – career may clarify his arrival at these solutions, and
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII THE ORIGINALITY OF JAMES HOBAN
NOTES William Ryan and Desmond Guinness, The White House: an architectural history (New York et al ., ), pp. –; William Seale, The President’s House (Washington, DC, ), I, p. . Richard Hewlings, ‘Firle Place: Syria in Sussex’, Georgian Group Journal , ( ), pp. – . Ryan and Guinness, op. cit. , pp. , , – , , and ; Seale, op. cit. , I, pp. – ; Egon Verheyen, ‘James Hoban’s Design for the White House in the Context of the Planning of the Federal City’, Architectura , ( ), pp. (Fig. ), (Fig. ); Pamela Scott and Antoinette J Lee, Buildings of the District of Columbia (New York and Oxford, ), pp. – . Ryan and Guinness, op. cit. , p. (Fig. ). Ibid. , plate . Ibid. , plate . Martin IJ Griffin, ‘James Hoban, the Architect and Builder of the White House’, American Catholic Historical Researches , , no. ( ), pp. – ; Frederick D Owen, ‘The First Government Architect’, The Architectural Record , , pp. –; Fig. . The kitchen at No. Downing Street, F[iske] K[imball], ‘Hoban, James’, in Dictionary of added by Sir Robert Taylor in – . American Biography , V (New York, ), pp. –; Matthew Baigell, ‘James Hoban and the First Bank confirm or deny his originality in respect of the of the United States’, Journal of the Society of second window type. But, even without further Architectural Historians , (May ), pp. –; investigation, the mere identification of these two Daniel D Rieff, ‘James Hoban’, in Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects (London, ), II, features suggests that Hoban was better educated pp. –; Seale, op. cit. , pp. – , which gives his and possibly more imaginative than Latrobe, or date of birth as ; H Boylan, Dictionary of Irish indeed anyone, has previously considered. Biography (Dublin, rd. ed., ), p. ; Pamela Scott, ‘Hoban, James’, in American National Biography , X (New York and Oxford, ), pp. –; James D Kornwolf, Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial North America (Baltimore and London, ), III, pp. –; Ronald M Birse, ‘Hoban, James’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography XXVII, ( ), pp. – . John Turpin, A School of Art in Dublin since the Eighteenth Century (Dublin, ), pp. – ; G Willemsen, The Dublin Society Drawing Schools, Students and Award Winners – (Dublin, ). Ryan and Guinness, op. cit. , p. . Edward MacParland, James Gandon (London, ). For Ivory, see Anthologia Hibernica ( ), I, p. ; Maurice Craig, Dublin – (Dublin,
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), pp. – ; Edward McParland, ‘Thomas Hewlings, op. cit. , p. . Ivory’, Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Ricardo, Conte di Burlington, Fabbriche Antiche Society , (January–June ), pp. – ; Disegnate di Andrea Palladio , (Londra, ), p. . D O’Connor, ‘Thomas Ivory’, Royal Institute of Daniel M Abramson, Building the Bank of England Architects of Ireland Year Book ( ), pp. – ; (New Haven and London, ), pp. –, and A.M. Rowan, ‘Ivory, Thomas’, in Oxford Dictionary fig. . of National Biography , XXIX ( ), p. . For Richard Garnier, ‘Thorncroft Manor, Leatherhead’, Cooley, see Craig, op. cit. , pp. – ; Edward Georgian Group Journal , ( ), pp. –. McParland, ‘James Gandon and the Royal Marcus Binney, Sir Robert Taylor (London, ), Exchange Competition – ’, Journal of the plate . For Malton, see Howard Colvin, Biographical Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland , , part Dictionary of British Architects – (New ( ), pp. – ; Edward McParland, ‘The Early Haven and London, ), p. ; Ann Saunders, History of James Gandon’s Four Courts’, Burlington ‘Malton, Thomas, the elder’ and ‘Malton, Thomas, Magazine , (November ), pp. – ; A.M. the younger’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Rowan, ‘Cooley, Thomas’, in Oxford Dictionary of Biography , XXXVI ( ), pp. –. The elder National Biography , XIII, , pp. –; Ruth Thomas Malton moved to Dublin in ; the Thorpe, ‘Thomas Cooley before the Dublin Royal younger Thomas briefly joined his father there in Exchange’, Irish Architectural and Decorative . Although Hoban advertised his presence in Studies , ( ), pp. – ; John Goodall, Philadelphia on May , in the same year as the ‘A Georgian vision realised; Armagh, Co. Armagh’, elder Thomas Malton’s move to Dublin [Scott, Country Life , November , pp. – . ‘Hoban’, cit. , p. ], the latter appears to have Hewlings, op. cit. , p. . moved because of previous connections there. Robert Adam, The Ruins of the Palace of the Hoban may thus have been acquainted with either Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro , London, , of the Maltons, in which case he might have been Hewlings, op. cit. , pp. –. more easily receptive to their publications. Scott, op. cit. , identifies Hoban’s religious communion by noting that he is credited with establishing the first Catholic church in Washington.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII AN EAST ANGLIAN GOTHIC CONUNDRUM
JOHN HARRIS
his mysterious painting, oil on canvas, has an notably the colleges of Kings’s and Trinity in the TEast Anglian provenance, with Elvetham and early s. What is unmistakable is the painted Duleep Singh, and is now in the possession of inscription upon a stone that seems to read in capital Christopher Foley. The extraordinarily grand letters THETFORD. Alas, due to bitumen, the rest collegiate layout is clearly monastic, for it is of the inscription or signature is lost. An oil-painted populated with monks. The architectural allegiances architectural design suggests serious intention. are with Cambridge and Cambridgeshire. One can There is not a scrap of evidence that the twelfth recollect the New Court of St John’s College, Duke of Norfolk, who died in , ever Cambridge, , by Rickman, Ely Cathedral, but contemplated a Catholic college in a town that at one more pertinently the work of William Wilkins, time did boast a small Cardinal’s College.
Design for a monastery or Catholic College intended for a site at Thetford, Norfolk, oil on canvas. Private Collection .
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