BUILDINGS OF THE CLASSICAL ERA (1620-1800) 17TH C

BUILDINGS OF THE CLASSICAL ERA (1620-1800) 17TH C. 19TH C.

CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE (1620-1720) 17TH 18TH C.

Individual architects became of importance, buildings were not planned by the church but by independent architects or architects working for the crown. Architecture now became dependent more on mind and intellect than of craftsmanship and material. Up till this time mansions had had a comparatively free hand in the details they carried out. There was a lack of knowledge of classical proportion, thus, the forms of buildings were a debased version of classical proportion. Now Inigo Jones worked under the conventions of the classic design.

INIGO JONES = 1st man to bring the pure Italian Renaissance style to the country in the 2nd decade of the 17th c. He was in charge of rebuilding the churches of London after the Great Fire of 1660. His buildings were very un-English in character = flat line of the parapet which hid the roof and the regularly spaced columns along the front. Examples:

BANQUETING HALL (Whitehall):

# solid looking ground floor

# sense of importance

# ceiling pointed by rubens

THE QUEENS HOUSE (Greenwhich):

# the plan and conception of this house influenced all subsequent domestic design.

# strict classical in detail

# completely rectangular, having no gables or other projections

# symmetrical

# the principal rooms were on the first floor. Very high with large windows which gave a sense of importance to buildings.

Inigo Jones had little influence on architectural design during his lifetime, but he influenced men like Christopher Wren and those who followed him. They owed their basic conception of classical design to Inigo Jones.

CHRISTOPHER WREN (mathematician, astronomer, inventor). He adapted the foreign building technique to English ways/ materials/ craftsmen. He used traditional English building materials: brick and ordinary roofing tiles (tejas), invanting new ways of using them to keep within the limits of classical rules. He also popularized the use of portland stone in London. He combined brick and stone. He went on with the rebuilding of the London Churches (construction of the dome of St. Paul Cathedral) burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666. He was appointed Surveyor-General to the Crown (1666).

CHURCHES: little church building was done in the 17th c. Some were built to meet the needs of the growing suburbs. By the end of the 17th c. services in the Reformed Protestant Very different affairs from the old medieval ones. CHARCTERISTICS: Large rooms, full of light, clarity and common sense. Wrens churches interiors were clean with gold-white plaster work and large pale windows. With galleries around the walls (feeling of spaciousness and rest) and the altar in the body of the church. Exteriors very simple. Usually, crowned by spires or towers, which mark the parishes. Wrens churches are known by these spires. They are tall piles of beautifully proportioned stone.

He also influenced the design of houses in towns and country. Under his influence, the characteristic Queen Annes House (house for the ordinary well-to-do gentleman) evolved at the beginning of the 18th c. Following the Queens House at Greenwich the QUEEN ANNES HOUSE was built.

CHARACTERISTICS:

# simple rectangular shape and a symmetrical outward appearance.

# hipped roof was used.

# dormer windows, projecting through the roof on the top floor, were often given little curved or triangular pediments.

# built in stone or brick.

# angles were frequently treated with corner stones or with blocks of brick work.

# sash window.

# doorways, made of stone, wood or brick were given canopies. These canopies were sometimes straight and sometimes curved in the form of pediments.

Predominant type of building = THE HOUSE (17TH C. - 18TH C.)

Next in importance = PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL BUILDING (customs-house, hospital, shop, markets, etc.)

CHARACTERISTICS: GENTLEMEN HOUSES

# gables were undesirable, hipped roofs used instead.

# dormers with little pediments curved or triangular.

# completely symmetrical.

# built in the local materials: stones or brick.

# angles treated with quoins or corner stones or with black of brick work.

# windows = heavy wood or stone frames and thick glazing bars. At its head, a stone or raised brick keystone was often introduced. The Sash window (ventana de guillotina) introduced early 18th c.

*seen in many Queen Anne Houses.

* became almost universal; in the Georgian Period

* remained the standard domestic window till the end of the 19th c.

# ceilings = fruit flowers and vegetables running round geometrical patterns carving treated with outmost realism.

# chimneys and doors = framed in marble with deep curly mouldings an possibly a pediment on the top.

# rooms = solid and dignified character.

The architectural character of the 17th c. changed considerably but in different degrees at different levels:

The poor mans house had hardly changed at all, but was slowly becoming less medieval in its details and built of more permanent materials.

The rich mans house had changed completely. Before: battlements, turrets (tower), oriel windows and yew (wood) edges. Now: symmetrical steep biproofed mansion, ponderously chimneyed, square windows framed like pictures and its solemn tall rooms.

BARROQUE (1720-1800) 18TH C. = AGE OF ENLIGHTMENT

# emphasis on ornaments.# characterized by great refinement.

# It is the architecture of the highly civilised age.

# bulding type = THE TOWN HOUSE = THE GEORGIAN/GEORGIAN TERRACE HOUSE (STANDARIZED). The Gregorian terrace house began to be built towards the end of the 17th c. And it became in the 18th c. the general method employed for a vast residential urban development. It became the standard because during this century there existed an accepted standard of good taste (philosophy of materialism and reason). They were for the large and growing upper-middles class.

LEES WEALTHY = TERRACE HOUSE

Towards the end of the 17th c. the density of houses in towns had given rise to the invention of the TERRACE as a means of preserving dignity and economizing space.

Terrace houses = a whole set of houses all run together and treated as an architectural whole = method for vast residential development.

CHARACTERISTICS: & brick buildings with stone tops and sloping slate roofs.

& separated from each other by thick walls (risk of fire) which carried the chimney-stocks.

& usually 4 stories (level) high with a short and flight of steps up to the front door.

& principal rooms on the 1st floor.

& introduction of the Sash window (it has two frames fixed one above the other that open by being moved up and down on sash cords = ropes with height at the end) and almost the only employed. Georgian architects delighted and excelled in the design of the window.

& windows = short in the ground floor for solidity, very tall on the 1st floor for grandeur, slightly shorter on the next and completely square at the top of the house. These windows produced a feeling of rest and dignity.

& froont door: delicately panelled, with semi-circular fanlights over them.

Town planning of this sort would not have been possible if every man had built his own house. Owners of the land developed these projects as speculations.

# there was only one right way to build. To depart from it would be bad taste.

# a great number of all classes of buildings were built.

# the two Woods and the two Dances (father and son): four architects responsible for developing large areas of Bath and Dublin. Later in the century the brothers Adam did much to develop still more of Georgian London and developed a style quite their own. Most of Adams work was in town housing. They refined all the features of the Georgian town house, taking as the inspiration of their designs the details of Ancient Greece:

# spiders web fanlights over doorways.

# taller windows with thinner glazing bars.

# the Greek honeysuckle (madreselva) pattern was used everywhere: in plaster work on the columns, in ceilings, in the iron work of the balconies.

# shops, public works, commercial buildings were also erected in great numbers. Beautiful shop fronts: a further aspect of the Georgian street scene.

# COUNTRYSIDE: the wealth of the country was once more concentrated into fewer hands. The rich owned huge tracks of lands, which they enclosed. Common land became scarce. Small landholders worked as labourers for the big landowners or were absorbed by towns to seek employment. A depopulation of the countryside began.

Within his enclosed land the wealthy man kept great areas as private parks, in which he built his house with wonderful avenues of huge trees, artificial lakes, fountains, classical monuments, little temples and bridges.

In the earlier part of the 18th c. the houses of the very wealthy were often designed in the BARROQUE MANNER, employing classical motifs freely to produce an effect of grandeour without regard for strict rules of proportion. This style was never very popular in England. The attraction of Barroque is the magnificent exaggeration and the English didnt like ostentation very much

The Barroque appeals brutally to the senses and hardly to intellect. It is immensely 3 dimensional and exaggerated. The Barroque implies a style that owes little to convention and all to effect.

Chief Exponents of Barroque in England (not very popular):

# John Vanbrugh: greatest works: - BLENHEIN PALACE the effect of magnificence

- CASTLE HOWARD

the effect of magnificence is given by their broad massing and heroic proportions.

# Nicolas Hawksmoor: chief works: churches for the rapidly growing suburbs of London. He built in the free inventive style of wren, but without his warmth and genius.

After Wren, Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor had died the spirit of experiment and invention died too. Architecture settled down to a conventional good taste; a return to Palladian principles introduced by Inigo Jones. Large houses became less generous, colder and they have an air of aristocratic superiority.

LEES WEALTHY = TERRACE HOUSE

Towards the end of the 17th c. the density of houses in towns had given rise to the invention of the TERRACE as a means of preserving dignity and economizing space.

Terrace houses = a whole set of houses all run together and treated as an architectural whole = method for vast residential development.

CHARACTERISTICS: & brick buildings with stone tops and sloping slate roofs.

& separated from each other by thick walls (risk of fire) which carried the chimney-stocks.

& usually 4 stories (level) high with a short and flight of steps up to the front door.

& principal rooms on the 1st floor.

& introduction of the Sash window (it has two frames fixed one above the other that open by being moved up and down on sash cords = ropes with height at the end) and almost the only employed. Georgian architects delighted and excelled in the design of the window.

& windows = short in the ground floor for solidity, very tall on the 1st floor for grandeur, slightly shorter on the next and completely square at the top of the house. These windows produced a feeling of rest and dignity.

& froont door: delicately panelled, with semi-circular fanlights over them.

Town planning of this sort would not have been possible if every man had built his own house. Owners of the land developed these projects as speculations.

BUILDINGS OF THE INDUSTRIAL ERA (1801 TO PRESENT DAY) 19TH C.

19th c. Architecture falls into three categories: # REGENCY ARCH (1800-1830)

# REVIVAL ARCH (19th c. early 20th c.)

# INDUSTRIAL ARCH (19th c. 20th c.)

REGENCY ARCHITECTURE (Regency and reign of George IV)

Direct continuation of the Gregorian tradition of domestic building under George IV. In this period architecture seems to belong to the previous period: refined, civilsed recalling the Golden Age of culture instead that the: smoke and turmoil of the Industrial Rev. Upper and middle class homes combined in the classical tradition.

# Typical Regency House (designed by John Nash in London) = in a terrace or detached villa built in brick covered in stucco (a type of plaster used for covering walls and ceilings, esp. one which can be formed into decorative patterns) or painted plaster.

# Delicate Greco Italian flavour caused of their refined proportion and pointed walls.# fashion for stucco (facing material) = from Italy but in England used for being a cheap, mouldable material used instead of stone work.

# ELEGANCE is the essence of Regency architecture. Ex: St Regents Park John Alash (Regency Architect).

# Revival of Greek taste. It invaded every sphere.

# Terraces = laid out in the Grand Roman manner, although it was possible to reproduce in stucco the refinement of Greek carving.

# Smaller and less pompous terraces of the Regency = also in stucco, lees robust version of the Gregorian Terrace. Air of decadence with tall, thin windows with small glazing bars and fine ironwork balcony roofed in curving metal. Few decorative motifs. Terraces relayed for their effect on their good proportions and pleasing painted walls. Round-handed ground floor windows and front doors.

# detached houses and small villas = similar to the terraces with fine ironwork verandas and garden windows that come down to the ground. Curved bow windows. Use of painted wooden shutters (window cover).

REVIVAL ARCHITECTURE

# Powerful moment for reviving past styles, a return to medievalism, to the Gothic style (details of Early English style were imitated). We can see this return to medievalism in buildings such as Gothic ruins in the grounds of the great landowners, in the cottages designs for their tenants, a Gothic library or dining-room incorporated in their classical mansions.

# The revival was due to academic aesthetic principles formulated by serious architects (James Watt, A.W. Pugin, Charles Barry), and it became popular because it was a away to escape from the dull reality:

* world of ugliness and meanness.

* social evils that resulted from the increase of industrial activity and population (poverty, bad housing, low wages, unhealthy working conditions). * government instead of facing up the evils, tried to escape by encouraging the making of articles by hand and regarding articles made by machine worthless.

# the impracticability and inconvenience of old style of buildings was changed.

# wealthy mans house was given a Romantic Gothic appearance. This mock-medieval house descended and became ridiculous as it started to be imitated by the poor.

# struggle between classical and medieval but a comprimise was reached = last 50 years of the 19th c. and the first 20 of the 20th c.: Ecclesiastical and Scholastic building = Ghotic

Civic building = classic building. The classicists returned to a fine Greek style of building. Municipal buildings and even churches were erected as replicas of the buildings on the Acropolis of Athens.

Industry = a sort of Romanesque

# Buildings in fancy-dress styles continued throughout the 19th c. the periods in which styles were varying from time to time: Tudor, Jacobean, Perpendicular Ghotic, Norman, Elizabethan.

INDUSTRIAL ARCHITECTURE

# Engineers instead of architects came into prominence because architects were more concerned with aesthetic features than practicality. Incompatibility of industrial necessity and aesthetics.

# Engineers led to build railway bridges of an immense size and were constructed of iron and steel and railway stations were made of iron and glass. Ex: bridges of Telford, Brunel and others.

# the two most important new materials (they had arrived in quantity by the middle of the century): sheet glass and steel (used by Joseph) Ex: Crystal Palace (designed by Paxton).

# Towards the end of the century = commerce and urban populations had greatly increased so that larger buildings became necessary: block of flats, huge offices, big shops, banking houses. In crowded cities it was necessary to build in high and this led to the invention of steel frame. Popular taste insisted that such skeletons should be clothed in massive stonework to represent an ecclesiastical faade of great solidity and worth common feature of towns today).

# the poor mans house = cottages: the population had increased so rapidly that thousands of men working-class homes were needed in the Ind. Area. On the 1st half of the century falls the blame for creating the SLUMS OF INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND = rows of exactly similar ill-built, depressing unsanitary houses.

# thousands of schools built: compulsory education was introduced.

# hospitals and public buildings needed for the new towns.

PAINTING: DEPTH CAN TELL US ABOUT THE PERIOD.

MEDIEVALRENAISSANCE

Not many works because of the Reformation. Henry VIII with the dissolution of the monasteries brought to an end the tradition of religious art in monastic centres. It meant a complete break.The Renaissance developed later in England. Fist, the R. painters were invited by Henry VIII (an important patronage). For ex: Holbein (`The Embassador) and Hilliard.

Subject matter: mainly religiousSubject matter: mundane, depicted in his setting/ secular portraiture.

Aim: didactic (utilitarian) to teach a lesson.Aim: to produce aesthetic pleasure, a work of art.

Characteristics: - not rational in character.

- development of the linear design a feeling for line. An English delicacy of line and a graceful elongation of the figure in which lines plays on expressive part. Flat, not perspective.

- English style: significance is concentrated on outline rather than the plastic or dimensional substance of the figure (13th c. 14th c.).

- circuviliniar design as a legacy from the Celts.

- English medieval embroidery (opus Anglicanum) = feeling for lines and great refinement of colours.Characteristics: - perfect symmetry and balance.- depth and perspective/ 3D representation of the world volume.

- Metatextual dimension = is a text that refers to other text. Ex: Lit. Criticism.

- strong feeling of fraternalism reflected on the portraits of the Queen.

- nationalist.

- oleo painting.

Works: Mural Painting.

This genre vanished because of the white washed walls of the Reformation.

Illuminated Manuscripts = derived from the effect of light on gold. Not produced on paper but on vellums (material for writing on made from the skins of young animals: cow/sheep). There were 3 kinds of illuminations: capital letters, on the margins, on the whole page (miniature). Topics: religious, calendars and huntings. Many of the manuscripts were produced at courts so subject matters became secular. They were also produced at monasteries and lately at universities. Works: Queens Portraits.

The aim was to reflect physical likeness but what the queen symbolized for England; the queen was the symbol of the greatness of England.

Renaissance painters

# HOLLBEIN: portraits. He was able to reconcile physical likeness with the requirements of the R.

# HILLIARD: miniaturist. His miniatures were small jewels, delightful objects in themselves. They were a development from the Illuminated manuscripts.

# ISAK OLIVER: superficial likeness.

# It was to bring foreign painters: mannerist style.

- Scrots: (court painter H VII/Ed.VI)) full length p.

- Flicke

- Eworth

- Gower: native. Charm and feelings for line.

IMPORT OF FOREIGN PORTRAIT PAINTER = constant factor

# Departure from Elizabethan formality in the work of imported Dutch painters with whom Stuard portraiture begins.

# tendency towards realism.

# ability to convey character and to pose his sitter in a natural manner.

# advance towards elegance imitating Van Dick (1632).

# rubens painted the ceiling of Banqueting Hall by Inigo.

BARROQUE PAINTING

PURPOSE: to dignify

CHARACTERISTICS OF BARROQUE PAINTING

& decorative splendour.

& artificiality due to exclusive society.

& realism marks a breakdown from Van Dyck elegance and simplicity.

& solemnity of the time reflected on portraiture produce during the Commonwealth.

& common practice of the time = to regard figures gesture as a stock property to be used again and again with only a change of head.

- Sir Peter Lely = Pre-Restorian style mannerist. Portraiture in languishing (to exist in an unpleasant or unwanted situation) attitudes.

- Samuel Cooper = miniaturist scarcely distinguishable (of portraiture) from oil painting except for the size delicate sense of detail.

Characteristics of English Portraiture:

# aristocratic case of stance

# expressive pose of hands

# complementary character of two or more figures

T here were two factors that broke the uniformity of the later 17th c.: the emergence of new forms of painting and certain changes in portraiture painting.

The lack of variety in English art is striking due to the number of genres, which flourished in Holland and Southern Netherlands and also due to the significance of Barroque and decorative painting in France of Louis XIV.

NEW GENRES: LANSCAPE AND ANIMAL PAINTING. 18TH C.

# Landscape and topography is a Flemish tradition.

# It is strange that a century LLLLLLLLL by landscape it was previously unknown.

# Jow Wyck precursor of sporting artists.

# Francis Barlow painter of animals, birds. The chosen style made the paintings suitable as decorative panels.

# Decorative Mural Painting (tendency towards the European Barroque) not with religious connotations applied to ceiling and walls of royal and noble dwellings.

# Thornhill = active painters scare over the foreign invaders. End of naturalized foreigners.

# There is a Nat. attitude towards art in the idea of training-ground for English painters. A school freely open (beginning of 18th c.)

NATIONAL TRADITON IN PAINTING

- Importance of chiaroscuro

- New genres: maritime painting, animal painting, atmosphere painting

WILLIAM HOGARTH (1967-1764)

# His achievement: to give a comprehensive view of social life within a framework of moralistic and dramatic narrative.# elements of satire and caricature.

# provocative attitude = he objected the absurd veneration of antiquity as well as the assumption that English painters were inferior to foreigners.

# realistic production.

# a painter of social life = conversation pieces within moralistic and dramatic narrative (at the beginning). Genre invented by the Flemish and Dutch 17th c.

# new spirit of animated portraiture (informal composition).

# declared independence from continental tradition.

LLLLLLLLL = known for this carved designs in metal and stone.

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (1727-1788)

# landscape/ outdoor portraits/ open air conversation.

# countryman. His art was aristocratic. It tended towards an ideal that clearly differed from the realistic outllok of Hogarth.

# he painted portraits with outdoor country background.

# landscape composition in which figures were as fill a place.

# never tempted to leave his place since he was under patronage.

# portraiture + landscape uniquely found together.

# sentiment for English country and English life.

# he was influenced by Dutch Art Rubens Vandick.

# light on people clothes and trees.

JOSHUA REYNOLDS (1723-1792)

# portraits.

# 1ST PRESIDENT of the Royal Academy.

# elements of the Grand Style in his portraits (impression of theatrical or playful adjunct).

# children portraits

# English traits: humour (caricature portraits executed in Rome), individual characters in children portraits.

GEORGE STUBBS (1724-1806)

# animal painter: nature superior than art.

# more an animal painter than sporting painter.

# genre: very close to landscape but giving prominence to rural life = rural life + sport.

# Horseracing revived with the Foundation of the Jockey Club (1750). It produced a demand for sporting pictures. He was employed by the sporting aristocracy.

# master of the open-air conversation piece.

ROMANTIC PAINTING IN ENGLAND

JOHN CONSTABLE (1776-1837). Southern England.

# oil painter. He painted his countryside

# tendency to concentrate on the

# born to extend the realm of landscape painting (regional sense)

# capacity for rendering the freshness of atmosphere and the incidence of light.

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)

# middle-class Londoner.

# English poet who from childhood claimed to have visions and talked to human beings from heaven.

# very personal style = full of religious symbols.

# he produced illuminated manuscripts containing his poems and paintings to illustrate them (done by hand).

# linear design.

# importance of polarities.# a love for religious art of the Middle Ages.

# against portraiture and landscape. Horror for realistic oil painting.# with him a Romantic vista of free expression opens, a liberation of the poetic imagination suppressed in English painting.

WILLIAM TURNER (1775-1851)

# began as topographical painter.

# atmosphere painting. (seascapes, storms)# attraction for wild nature, infinite of space and movements of tremendous evidence.# always experimental. Using a variety of devices.

# original treatment of light and weather conditions.