3057 04 GREY WASH/HARRIS 16.5.Qxp
John Harris, ‘The grey wash style of the Palladian Office of Works’,The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xII, 2002, pp. 48–58
text © the authors 2002 THE GREY WASH STYLE OF THE PALLADIAN OFFICE OF WORKS
JOHN HARRIS
n when Prunella Hodgson and I were architecture on paper. There was nothing like it Icompiling a ‘roneoed’ catalogue of the Jones, before, nor much comparable elsewhere in the Office Webb and Burlington drawings in the Burlington of the King’s Works in the period – , and Devonshire Collection, I speculated upon a nothing after in the Office until the Wren–Hawksmoor recognizable ‘grey wash style’ of certain neo-Palladian partnership. A many-coloured coat is a characteristic drawings in the period c to c . I then thought, of what succeeded the professionalism of Webb, ‘Was it a coincidence that a coterie of leading which might be described as the age of the architects connected to the Georgian Office of Works gentleman-architect: Sir Roger Pratt, Hugh May, seemed to have adopted this as an office drafting William Samwell, William Talman, or indeed Sir style?’ I should explain the technique. It is pen and John Vanbrugh, all were untrained in the organization light grey wash applied to plans and elevations in a of the drawn design upon paper. It was not in the very meticulous and precise way. Black pen outlines manner of things that a gentleman should become an are washed in with the utmost care. The precision apprentice in these matters. seems to belong to an engraver’s technique. When I Now Colen Campbell’s name could also have examined a variety of French designs of the same been added to that list of earlier gentlemen-architects. period, although they rigidly conformed to rules laid By c he may have been making the transition down by the Bâtiments du Roi in the use of coded from lawyer to architect, possibly applying himself by colours for certain functions, there was a private pupilage to James Smith. In Campbell technicolour of options for the general use of wash on blatantly used a design by Smith for Shawfield elevations and plans. This technicolour variety is also Mansion, Glasgow. Lack of drafting skill is evident in characteristic of certain English architectural drawings, Campbell’s submissions in June to the notably provincial ones, of the Stuart and Williamite Commissioners for Building Fifty New Churches (Fig. periods. The colouring seems to follow no rational ). If we had to isolate a year when we sense a rules. Red, blue or yellow might be used simply to watershed towards the achievement of the grey wash jolly up the presentation. It struck me in that this style, it might be , the date of Colen Campbell’s sparse, grey or grisaille style admirably represented design (Fig. ) for Wanstead House, Essex, as the austerity of Burlingtonian Palladianism. I suppose engraved in the first volume of his Vitruvius I ought to have sought the possible origins of this Britannicus , a publication advertised in June grey technique then, but I did not. and published in April . Certainly by , if not The circumstances that brought Inigo Jones the somewhat earlier, Campbell must have begun the painter to architecture, and begat John Webb as the great task of re-drawing what would amount to nearly first professionally trained architect in this country, two hundred plans and elevations for Henry created a revolution in the presentation of Hulsburgh the engraver. There is no evidence that
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Fig. . Colen Campbell, two proposed designs for the Fifty New Churches. RIBA Library Drawings Collection.
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Fig. . Colen Campbell, proposed plan for Wanstead House, Essex, . RIBA Library Drawings Collection.
he had any assistance in this, although it is tempting and the application of wash. His mentor was surely to suggest that Hulsburgh himself guided Campbell. Henry Flitcroft, who is recorded as ‘first’ at The challenge was to produce drawings whose Tottenham in July and is the draughtsman of a drafting quality would be reflected in the engraving new Tottenham design dated (Fig. ). after transference to copper by the burin. This was What were Flitcroft’s credentials? As a labourer the means by which he became a master of this grey in the gardens of Hampton Court, his father Jeffery wash style. By this task he unshackled himself from had lowly connections to the Office of Works. On the provincial Smith. November Henry was apprenticed for seven A design (Fig. ) for Lord Bruce’s Tottenham years to Thomas Morris, joiner of London, thus Park, Wiltshire, has been published as the first presumably achieving his release in November . attempt at design by Lord Burlington, yet another The transition into Burlington’s employ may well gentleman-architect. This incompetently delineated have been through the influence of Morris, who was and muddily washed-in elevation must have been paid by Burlington £ in part on October , made in , or before February , when Bruce and another £ on June , payments for married Burlington’s sister. The British Vitruvius of work at Chiswick almost certainly under Campbell’s later years could not yet draw properly. It would be supervision, for Campbell was then also engaged by some while before he mastered the technique of line Burlington upon Burlington House. The suggestion
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Fig. . Lord Burlington, proposed elevation for Tottenham Park, Wiltshire, c . Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection.
Fig. . Henry Flitcroft, proposed elevation for Tottenham Park, Wiltshire, . Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection.
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Fig. . Henry Flitcroft, proposed plan and elevation for the Tuscan temple by the water at Chiswick House, Middlesex. RIBA Library Drawings Collection.
that Flitcroft was the unnamed workman, ‘that broke grey wash style, as we find with the Temple by the his leg by a fall from the scaffold’ in , can now be Water at Chiswick (Fig. ). We might also see a dismissed, as that workman was called John window here to the wider aspect of Campbell’s Smith. It can only be hypothetical that Flitcroft introduction of this style due to his appointment as moved from employ by Campbell at Chiswick to that Chief Clerk and Deputy Surveyor of the King’s Works of Burlington, but it seems likely. Payments to him in in September , albeit for a brief nine months. Burlington’s accounts commence December There is a second sequence or axis to the . From then on he acted as Burlington’s Campbell–Flitcroft–Burlington one, namely that of draftsman, office manager, and clerk of works until Campbell–Thomas Ripley-Isaac Ware at Houghton. . Nearly all Burlington’s rougher or sketched Ripley had been appointed to Houghton in , designs are apparently redrawn by him in perfect presumably as clerk of the works to James Gibbs.
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Fig. . Colen Campbell, proposed elevation for Houghton Hall, Norfolk, . RIBA Library Drawings Collection.
Fig. . Henry Flitcroft, survey elevation of Fig. . William Kent, elevation and part plan San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, before . of a proposed royal house, . RIBA Library Drawings Collection. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
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Ware was apprenticed to Ripley in August . hand, as are all the measures and inscriptions. The It would only be natural that the youthful Ware prevailing view that Kent was but a witty delineator would be brought into this great project. Following incapable of the routine of the drawing board must Gibbs’s dismissal, Campbell’s earliest inscribed be rejected. The Office style was further designs (Fig. ) are dated , his latest , by strengthened by Ware, for shortly before he had which time he had been succeeded by William Kent. finished his apprenticeship in August he had It might have been here at Houghton that Ware could been appointed Clerk Itinerant and [significantly] have learnt of the grey wash style from Campbell’s Draughtsman in the Works, a post secured through drawings. He would become a perfectionist in this. the patronage of Ripley. At almost the same time he The wider spread of the style through the Office moved into Burlington’s orbit, possibly through of Works is due to Burlington’s patronage. Flitcroft is having met Kent at Houghton. His new job was to the conduit from Campbell, spreading the style redraw Palladio’s reconstructions of the Roman through the Office following his appointment in May Baths for Burlington’s edition of his Fabbriche as Clerk of the Works at Whitehall, Westminster Antiche , dated . In this matter it was not a grey and St James’s. But before that, from about , he is wash style that Ware espoused, but a browny-sepia engaged upon a work of drawing that was to have as wash, demanded by Burlington in his desire to great a drafting influence as Vitruvius Britannicus : facsimilize Palladio’s wash. the redrawing of the designs by Jones and Webb There is a third axis: Campbell–Roger purchased by Burlington from John Talman in May Morris–Office of Works. In Morris is very likely . Within a year of acquisition Burlington had to have been the bricklayer involved in the building ordered Henry Hulsbergh to commence the of the Library wing at Narford in Norfolk, where Sir engraving, of perfect drawings made by Flitcroft Andrew Fountaine as an amateur architect may have (Fig. ). They were published in two volumes under had some assistance from Campbell, whose style is the editorship of Kent as The Designs of Inigo implicit in the library elevations. In Campbell’s Jones…With Some Additional Designs in , the larger designs for Goodwood were drawn out for a ‘Additional’ ones being by Burlington and Kent. It presentation album in a hand that is unmistakedly was an educating process for Kent, and it is possible that of Morris (Fig. ) and published in the third that an elevation for a great house or palace (Fig. ) volume, , of Vitruvius Britannicus . Morris was that appears to be in Flitcroft’s hand, but is signed also the draughtsman, or indeed architect, of the and dated on the verso in brown or sepia pen, ‘Wm Campbellian elevations for Pembroke House, Kent: ’, is a result of this educating editorship. It Whitehall, and Marble Hill House, Middlesex, both conforms to the grey wash style of Flitcroft’s other designed by Campbell in this year. In Morris drawings, and is not in Kent’s usual idiosyncratic entered the Office of Works as Clerk of the Works at sepia wash style that would soon become his trade Richmond New Park Lodge and, in , became mark, following the designs for the saloon at Master Carpenter in the Office of Ordnance. All his Houghton in . It is Kent’s first attempt at a drawings, such as those for Whitton Place, Middlesex design for a country house. Even if he abandoned the (Fig. ), or West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, style in general, Flitcroft’s drafting task taught Kent both c. , conform to the style. to rally to what had become this professional Office An interesting demonstration of the style is of Works style when he was working on his great contained in a demounted volume of designs in designs for a new Houses of Parliament (Figs. a and Avery Library of Columbia University. The vellum b). The early drawings from c appear to be in his cover is inscribed ‘Westminster House of Lords and
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Fig. a. William Kent, elevation of proposed Houses of Parliament, c . Public Record Office.
Fig. b. William Kent, plan of proposed Houses of Parliament, c . Sir John Soane’s Museum.
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Fig. . Roger Morris, Colen Campbell’s proposed elevation for Goodwood House, Sussex, . The Duke of Richmond, Lennox, Gordon and Aubigny .
Fig. . Roger Morris, proposed elevation for Whitton Place, Middlesex, c . Yale Center for British Art (photograph Courtauld Institute of Art).
Commons’, and an inscription inside provides a later Campbellian–Burlingtonian phase of provenance as ‘L.N. Cottingham, Gt Queen neo–Palladianism. Which of course it did. Deviants Street, Lincolns Inn Fields ’. This Office of must be acknowledged. Even if Kent conformed to Works album contained a miscellany of designs by the style when attending to the Houses of Parliament, Flitcroft, Ware, John Vardy and others. Ware’s plan in general his draughtsmanship was of the yellowy- for the Mansion House competition, Flitcroft’s for browny picturesque variety. Vardy too was under Fort Belvedere and – Old Palace Yard, Kent’s sway, as was that other Kentian acolyte, Westminster, or a ‘competition’(?) design for the Stephen Wright. Campbell’s fame as the editor and London Hospital, were indistinguishable from each author of Vitruvius Britannicus is assured. Now, other on the basis of pen and grey wash. through the engraving process, to him must be It is an attractive notion that the ‘grey wash style’ accorded a role in the innovation and dissemination admirably represented the austerity of the of the grey wash style.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Compare the elevation of a design by Smith [Colvin, The author is grateful to the Royal Institute of British “Scottish origin…”, cit., fig. a] with Campbell, Architects, London, to the Ashmolean Museum, Vitruvius Britannicus , II, , pl. , elevation of Shawfield Mansion. Oxford, to the Public Record Office, London, to Sir An uncommonly interesting early Campbell design John Soane’s Museum, London, to His Grace the is the unexecuted plan for Ardkinglas House, Duke of Richmond, Lennox, Gordon and Aubigny, Argyllshire [Inverary Castle, Argyllshire, archives], to the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, and to in drafting style c – , but in plan as advanced the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, as Campbell’s villas of the s. John Harris (ed.), Catalogue of the Drawings Connecticut, for permission to publish drawings in Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, their collections. Colen Campbell , Farnborough, , no. , the elevation s&d ‘Colen Campbell ’. Eileen Harris (assisted by Nicholas Savage), British Architectural Books and Writers – , Cambridge, , – . NOTES It might be hazarded that Hulsburgh would have This paper was originally given at the conference on been familiar with Buchotte, but his treatise is late in Architectural Draughtsmanship held by the this account. In any case Buchotte must always have Department for Continuing Education, Oxford been very rare. He does not appear in English University, – May . architectural library catalogues. Later Prunella Fraser. The original drawings are contained in two volumes Royal Institute of British Architects : Burlington in London, RIBA Drawings Collection. There is a Devonshire Collection Part . A Catalogue of the distinct improvement in drafting quality in the Drawings of Inigo Jones, John Webb and Richard second volume two years later in , as indeed is Boyle, Third Earl of Burlington in the Burlington- the case with the miscellaneous drawings eventually Devonshire Collection , . published in volume III, . This is set out by Buchotte, Les Règles du dessein at John Harris, ‘The Building Works of Lord Viscount du lavis, pour les plans particuliers des ouvrages & Bruce’, in Roger White (ed.), Lord Burlington and des batimens, & pour les coupes, profils, elévations & his Circle , London, , figs. –. facades, tant de l’architecture militaire que de civil , Loose note in uncatalogued miscellaneous Bruce Claude Jombert, Paris, , revised by Charles- papers in the possession of Lord Cardigan, Sturmy Antoine Jombert, Paris, and . He Lodge, Savernake, Wiltshire. recommends that wash be light or a solid grey Harris, “...Lord Viscount Bruce”, cit ., fig. . showing lines. For a modern account of the history Chatsworth, Messrs Graham & Colliers Joynt of French architectural draughtsmanship, see Acccounts st & nd , fol. : “Oct.r , To Tho: Barbara Shapiro Comte , The Architect’s Working Morris Carpenter at Chiswick in pt. £ ”; and fol. : Drawings in Context : Paris, – “June To Tho: Morris Carpenter at [unpublished doctoral thesis, Harvard University], Chiswick in part of a greater sum £ ”. I am grateful chapter , – . to Dr Cinzia Sicca and Mr. Richard Hewlings for Eg. the group of designs for Thornton Hall, these references from the account book at Lincolnshire, made for Sir Rowland Wynne c. , Chatsworth. all in various pink, yellow or blue washes [Nostell Not the Campbellian Casina of , unless interior Priory, Yorks.]. finishing was delayed by two years, but possibly the Howard Colvin, Biographical Dictionary of British Summer Parlour. Architects – , New Haven and London, Colvin, Biographical Dictionary... , cit ., , n. , , ; Howard Colvin, ‘A Scottish Origin for referring to what must now be regarded as Dr English Palladianism?’, Architectural History , XX, Pamela Kingsbury’s incomplete reading of the , – . accounts.
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I am again indebted to Dr Cinzia Sicca for giving It needs to be observed that Ware’s own style of me the correct abstracts from Chatsworth, Messrs draughtsmanship was influenced by this sepia wash Graham & Colliers Joynt Accounts st & nd , fol. , style. His design for Westminster Bridge [London, “Oct.r To the Surgeon for taking care of the RIBA] is in sepia and brown. But his design for the Man that broke his Leg by a fall from the Scaffold Mansion House competition [John Harris, A £ s d”; fol. : “Dec.r To John Chateveure Catalogue of British Drawings For Architecture, Surgeon for the Cure of a Man that fell from the Decoration, Sculpture And Landscape Gardening Scaffold £ s”; fol. : “To Jane Gally for nursing – In American Collections , Upper Saddle John Smith hurt by the fall of the Scaffold at B: River, , pl. ] is in a neat grey style. House £ ”. Steve Parissien, John Harris and Howard Colvin, Chatsworth, Graham & Colliers Joynt Accounts, ‘Narford Norfolk’, The Georgian Group Report and fol. : “To Henry Flitcroft travelling Charges to his Journal , , – . Lop. at the L. Carletons £ s d”. This would have Once in London, RIBA Drawings Collection, now been to Middleton Park, Oxfordshire, a returned to the archives of the Duke of Richmond, Vanbrughian house built for Henry Boyle, Lord Goodwood House, Sussex. Carlton, c. [Colvin, Biographical Dictionary ..., Both designs are in the Wilton archives, deposited cit ., ]. Wiltshire Record Office, Trowbridge, and are John Harris, ‘James Gibbs Eminence Grise at reproduced in Marie P. Draper and W.A. Eden, Houghton’, Georgian Group Symposium , , –. Marble Hill House and its owners , London, , Ware would commemorate his employment at pls. –; Steven Brindle, ‘Pembroke House, Houghton by publishing The Plans, Elevations and Whitehall’, The Georgian Group Journal , VIII, Sections of Houghton in Norfolk in . , – . John Harris, ‘ Who Designed Houghton?’, Country Many Ordnance designs are also in the grey wash Life , CLXXXIII, March , , –. style. The influence of Morris in that Office remains John Harris (ed.), … Campbell , cit ., nos. –, and no. to be elucidated. . John Harris, Catalogue of British Drawings …, cit ., Eileen Harris, op. cit ., – , nos. – . pls. – . As Richard Hewlings observes, this design has a West Wycombe Park, Bucks., archives. The design crown in the pediment and maybe a figure of for a bridge with open belvederes at each end must Britannia on the skyline. He postulates the also be by Morris. possibility that this might be a rejected design for John Harris, Catalogue of British Drawings …, cit ., White Lodge, Richmond Park. – .
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