Sir John Vanbrugh was an English architect and dramatist, perhaps best known as the designer of
Blenheim PalaceBlenheim Palace is a monumental country house situated in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, residence of the dukes of Marlborough. It is the only non-royal non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title of palace. The palace, one of England's largest houses, was built between...
and
Castle HowardCastle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, north of York. One of the grandest private residences in Britain, most of it was built between 1699 and 1712 for the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, to a design by Sir John Vanbrugh...
. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken
Restoration comediesRestoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama...
,
The RelapseThe Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by John Vanbrugh. The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, or, Virtue Rewarded....
(1696) and
The Provoked WifeThe Provoked Wife is the second original comedy written by John Vanbrugh. The often-repeated claim that Vanbrugh wrote part of his comedy The Provoked Wife in the Bastille is based on allusions in a couple of much later memoirs, but is regarded with some doubt by modern scholars...
(1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. He was knighted in 1714.
Vanbrugh was in many senses a radical throughout his life. As a young man and a committed
WhigThe Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...
, he was part of the scheme to overthrow
James IIJames II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...
, put
William IIIWilliam III & II was a sovereign Prince of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau by birth. From 1672 he governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel of the Dutch Republic. From 1689 he reigned as William III over England and Ireland...
on the throne and protect English parliamentary democracy, and he was imprisoned by the French as a
political prisonerAccording to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
. In his career as a
playwrightA playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, he offended many sections of
RestorationThe Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
and 18th century society, not only by the sexual explicitness of his plays, but also by their messages in defence of
women's rightsFeminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
in marriage. He was attacked on both counts, and was one of the prime targets of
Jeremy CollierJeremy Collier was an English theatre critic, non-juror bishop and theologian.-Life:Born in Stow cum Quy, Cambridgeshire, Collier was educated at Caius College, University of Cambridge, receiving the BA and MA . A supporter of James II, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and...
's
Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English StageIn March of 1698, Jeremy Collier published his anti-theater pamphlet, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage; in the pamphlet, Collier attacks a number of playwrights: William Wycherley, John Dryden, William Congreve, John Vanbrugh, and Thomas D’Urfey...
. In his
architecturalArchitecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
career, he created what came to be known as
English BaroqueEnglish Baroque is a term sometimes used to refer to the developments in English architecture that were parallel to the evolution of Baroque architecture in continental Europe between the Great Fire of London and the Treaty of Utrecht ....
. His architectural work was as bold and daring as his early political activism and marriage-themed plays, and jarred
conservativeConservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
opinions on the subject.
Early life and background
Born in London and baptised on 24 January 1664, Vanbrugh was the fourth child (of 19), and eldest surviving son, of Giles Vanbrugh and his wife Elizabeth, widow of Thomas Barker (by whom Vanbrugh's mother had the first of her twenty children, Vanbrugh's elder half-sister, Elizabeth), and daughter of
Sir Dudley CarletonSir Dudley Carleton was a minor diplomat and Clerk of the Council. He was the younger son of George and Catharine Carleton née Harrison of Huntercombe Oxfordshire and lived at Clerkenwell and Holcombe, Oxfordshire.-Career:...
, of Imber Court,
Thames DittonThames Ditton is a village in Surrey, England, bordering Greater London. It is situated 12.2 miles south-west of Charing Cross between the towns of Kingston upon Thames, Surbiton, Esher and East Molesey...
,
SurreySurrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
. He grew up in
ChesterChester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...
, where his family had been driven by the major outbreak of the
plague in LondonThe Great Plague was a massive outbreak of disease in the Kingdom of England that killed an estimated 100,000 people, 20% of London's population. The disease is identified as bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted through a flea vector...
in 1665,
[Vanbrugh's family background and youth have been relayed down the centuries as hearsay and anecdote. Kerry Downes has shown in his well-researched modern biography (1987) that even the Encyclopædia Britannica]The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
and the Dictionary of National BiographyThe Dictionary of National Biography is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published from 1885...
repeat 18th- and 19th-century traditions which were originally offered as guesses but have since hardened into "fact". This accounts for several discrepancies between the entries in these encyclopædias and the following narrative, which is based on the findings of Downes (1987) and McCormick (1991). and attended
The King's SchoolThe King's School, Chester is a British coeducational independent 7-18 school situated just outside the city of Chester. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference....
.
Downes is sceptical of earlier historians' claims of a lower
middle-classThe middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
background, and writes that a 19th-century suggestion that Giles Vanbrugh was a sugar-baker has been misunderstood. "
Sugar-bakerA sugar-baker was the owner of a sugar house, a factory for the refining of raw sugar from the Barbados. Sugar refining would normally be combined with sugar trading, which was a lucrative business. Downes gives an example of one sugar baker's house in Liverpool being estimated to bring in £40,000...
" implies wealth, as the term refers not to a
maker of sweetsConfectionery is the set of food items that are rich in sugar, any one or type of which is called a confection. Modern usage may include substances rich in artificial sweeteners as well...
but to the owner of a sugar house, a factory for the refining of raw
sugarSugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
from
BarbadosBarbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...
. Sugar refining would normally have been combined with sugar trading, which was a lucrative business. Downes' example of one sugar baker's house in
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, estimated to bring in
£The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
40,000 a year in trade from Barbados, throws a new light on Vanbrugh's social background, one rather different from the picture of a backstreet Chester sweetshop as painted by Leigh Hunt in 1840 and reflected in many later accounts.
In order to dispel the myth of Vanbrugh's low origins, Downes took pains to explore Vanbrugh's background, closely examining the family and connexions of each of his four grandparents: Vanbrugh, Jacobs or Jacobson, Carleton, and Croft, summing up the characteristics of each line and concluding that, far from being of lower middle class origins, Vanbrugh was descended from Anglo-Flemish or Netherlandish Protestant merchants who settled in London in the 16th and 17th centuries, minor courtiers, and country gentry. The complex web of kinship Downes' research shows that Vanbrugh had ties to many of England's leading mercantile, gentry, and noble families. These ties reveal the decidedly Protestant and sometimes radical milieu out of which Vanbrugh's own political opinions came. They also gave him a very wide social network that would play a role in all sections of his career: architectural, ceremonial, dramatic, military, political, and social.
Taken in this context, though he has sometimes been viewed as an odd or unqualified appointee to the College of Arms, it is not surprising, given the social expectations of his day, that by descent his credentials for his offices there were sound. His forebears, both Flemish/Dutch and English, were
armigerousHeraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...
, and their coats of arms can be traced in three out of four cases, revealing that Vanbrugh was of gentle descent (Jacobson, of Antwerp and London [the family of his paternal grandmother Maria daughter of Peter brother to Philip Jacobson, jeweller and financier to successive English kings,
James IJames VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
, and
Charles ICharles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
, and monied backer of the
Second Virginia CompanyThe Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America...
and the
East India CompanyThe East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
;
Carleton of Imber CourtDudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester was an English art collector, diplomat and Secretary of State.-Early life:He was the second son of Antony Carleton of Brightwell Baldwin, Oxfordshire, and of Jocosa, daughter of John Goodwin of Winchendon, Buckinghamshire...
;
Croft of Croft CastleCroft Castle is a manor house and associated buildings near the village of Yarpole in Herefordshire, England some to the north-west of Leominster .-11th century origin:...
.
After growing up in a large household in Chester (12 children of his mother's second marriage survived infancy), the question of how Vanbrugh spent the years from age 18 to 22 (after he left school) was long unanswered, with the baseless suggestion sometimes made that he had been studying architecture in France (stated as fact in the Dictionary of National Biography). Recently, however, Robert Williams proved in an article in the TLS ("Vanbrugh's Lost Years", 3 September 1999) that Vanbrugh was in India for part of this period, working for the East India Company at their trading post in
SuratSurat , also known as Suryapur, is the commercial capital city of the Indian state of Gujarat. Surat is India's Eighth most populous city and Ninth-most populous urban agglomeration. It is also administrative capital of Surat district and one of the fastest growing cities in India. The city proper...
,
Gujarat where his uncle, Edward Pearce, had been Governor. However, Vanbrugh never mentioned this experience in writing. Scholars debate whether evidence of his exposure to Indian architecture can be detected in any of his architectural designs.
The picture of a well-connected youth is reinforced by the fact that Vanbrugh in January 1686 took up an officer's commission in his distant relative the
Earl of Huntingdon'sTheophilus Hastings, 7th Earl of Huntingdon PC was an English politician. He was the son of Ferdinando Hastings, 6th Earl of Huntingdon, born in the 27th year of his parents' marriage, and became Earl of Huntingdon on 13 February 1656 on his father's death...
foot regiment. Since commissions were in the gift of the commanding officer, Vanbrugh's entry as an officer shows that he did have the kind of family network that was then essential to a young man starting out in life. Even so in August 1686 he left this position when the regiment was ordered to help garrison
GuernseyGuernsey, officially the Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.The Bailiwick, as a governing entity, embraces not only all 10 parishes on the Island of Guernsey, but also the islands of Herm, Jethou, Burhou, and Lihou and their islet...
.
In spite of the distant noble relatives and the lucrative sugar trade, Vanbrugh never seemed to possess any capital for business ventures (such as the
Haymarket TheatreThe Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
), but always had to rely on loans and backers. The fact that Giles Vanbrugh had twelve children to support and set up in life may go some way towards explaining the debts that were to plague John all his life.
Connections
Some of Vanbrugh's kinsmen - as he addressed them in his letters
- The Earl of Arran
Richard Butler, 1st Earl of Arran, Baron Butler of Cloughgrenan, Viscount Tullough was an Irish peer, the fourth son of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde-Life:...
(1639–1686). His wife (from 1673) was Vanbrugh's first-cousin, Dorothy née Ferrers
- The 3rd Earl of Berkshire (1619–1706)
Thomas Howard, 3rd Earl of Berkshire was an English peer, styled Hon. Thomas Howard until 1679. He was the second son of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Berkshire....
. Frances née Harrison, Countess of Berkshire. Vanbrugh's grandfather's sister, Elizabeth Carleton married John Harrison, uncle of the Countess of Berkshire and in addition the Countess's aunt, Anne Garrard, married Dudley Carleton, Viscount Dorchester, uncle to Vanbrugh's same grandfather. Frances was (half) second cousin to Vanbrugh's mother.
- The 3rd Earl of Carlisle
Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, PC was a British statesman and member of the peerage of England.Charles Howard was the eldest son of Edward Howard and inherited his title on the death of his father in 1692. He married in 1683 Lady Anne de Vere Capell, daughter of Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of...
(1669–1738) of Castle HowardCastle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, north of York. One of the grandest private residences in Britain, most of it was built between 1699 and 1712 for the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, to a design by Sir John Vanbrugh...
. Carlisle's grandmother, Lady Anne Howard, Countess of Carlisle, was first cousin to the 3rd Earl of Berkshire
- The Duke of Devonshire
William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire KG PC was a soldier and Whig statesman, the son of William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire and Lady Elizabeth Cecil.-Life:...
(1640–1707). His Duchess was the Earl of Arran's sister
- The 2nd Earl of Chesterfield
Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield PC was a peer in the peerage of England.-Personal life:He was the son of Henry Stanhope, Lord Stanhope and his wife, Katherine Wotton. He inherited the title of Earl of Chesterfield on the death of his grandfather in 1656...
(1634–1714). His Countess was the Earl of Arran's sister. His uncle Ferdinando StanhopeFerdinando Stanhope was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1643. He died fighting for the Royalist army during the English Civil War.-Biography:...
married Lettice Ferrers, aunt of the Countess of Arran
- The 7th Earl of Huntingdon
Theophilus Hastings, 7th Earl of Huntingdon PC was an English politician. He was the son of Ferdinando Hastings, 6th Earl of Huntingdon, born in the 27th year of his parents' marriage, and became Earl of Huntingdon on 13 February 1656 on his father's death...
(1650–1701). Vanbrugh's mother was his (half) third cousin.
Vanbrugh's own first and second cousins included Sir Humphrey Ferrers (1652–1678),
Sir Herbert Croft Bt (1652–1720)Sir Herbert Croft, 1st Baronet was the only son of the Right Reverend Herbert Croft, Bishop of Hereford and Anne Browne, the only daughter of the Very Rev. Dr. Jonathan Browne and Anne Barne Lovelace...
, Sir Roger Cave Bt (1655–1703) and Cave's sister, wife of
Sir Orlando Bridgeman Bt (1650–1701)Sir Orlando Bridgeman, 1st Baronet FRS was an English baronet and politician.-Background:Bridgeman was the second son of Sir Orlando Bridgeman, 1st Baronet, by his second wife Dorothy, daughter of John Saunders. He was educated at Westminster College from 1662 and after two years went to Magdalene...
Younger brothers; Charles MP and
PhilipPhilip VanBrugh naval officer and Commodore Governor of Newfoundland, born Chester England and baptised there 31 January 1681/2.-Family:...
, Governor of Newfoundland, were naval commanders
Political activism and the Bastille
From 1686, Vanbrugh was working undercover, playing a role in bringing about the armed invasion by
William of OrangeWilliam III & II was a sovereign Prince of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau by birth. From 1672 he governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel of the Dutch Republic. From 1689 he reigned as William III over England and Ireland...
, the deposition of
James IIJames II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...
, and the
Glorious RevolutionThe Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, is the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau...
of 1689. He thus demonstrates an intense early identification with the Whig cause of parliamentary democracy, with which he was to remain affiliated all his life. Returning from bringing William messages at
The HagueThe Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
, Vanbrugh was arrested at
CalaisCalais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
on a charge of
espionageEspionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
(which Downes concludes was trumped-up) in September 1688, two months before William invaded England. Vanbrugh remained in prison in France for four and a half years, albeit in reasonable comfort, before being released in exchange for a French political prisoner. His life is sharply bisected by this prison experience, which he entered at age 24 and emerged from at 29, after having spent, as Downes puts it, half his adult life in captivity. It seems to have left him with a lasting distaste for the French political system but also with a taste for the comic dramatists and the architecture of France.
The often-repeated claim that Vanbrugh wrote part of his comedy The Provoked Wife in the Bastille is based on allusions in a couple of much later memoirs and is regarded with some doubt by modern scholars (see McCormick). After being released from the Bastille, he had to spend three months in Paris, free to move around but unable to leave the country, and with every opportunity to see an architecture "unparalleled in England for scale, ostentation, richness, taste and sophistication". He was allowed to return to England in April 1693, once he returned to England he joined the Navy and took part in an unsuccessful naval attack against the French at
BrestBrest is a city in the Finistère department in Brittany in northwestern France. Located in a sheltered position not far from the western tip of the Breton peninsula, and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an important harbour and the second French military port after Toulon...
. At some point in the mid-1690s, it is not known exactly when, he exchanged army life for London and the London stage.
London
Vanbrugh's London career was diverse and varied, comprising playwriting, architectural design, and attempts to combine these two overarching interests. His overlapping achievements and business ventures were sometimes confusing even to Vanbrugh himself.
The Kit-Cat Club
A committed Whig, Vanbrugh was a member of the
Kit-Cat ClubThe Kit-Cat Club was an early 18th century English club in London with strong political and literary associations, committed to the furtherance of Whig objectives, meeting at the Trumpet tavern in London, and at Water Oakley in the Berkshire countryside.The first meetings were held at a tavern in...
— and particularly popular for "his colossal geniality, his great good humour, his easy-going temperament". The Club is best known today as an early 18th century social gathering point for culturally and politically prominent Whigs, including many artists and writers (William Congreve,
Joseph AddisonJoseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
,
Godfrey KnellerSir Godfrey Kneller, 1st Baronet was the leading portrait painter in England during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and was court painter to British monarchs from Charles II to George I...
) and
politiciansThe politics of the United Kingdom takes place within the framework of a constitutional monarchy, in which the Monarch is the head of state and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government...
(the
Duke of MarlboroughJohn Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Prince of Mindelheim, KG, PC , was an English soldier and statesman whose career spanned the reigns of five monarchs through the late 17th and early 18th centuries...
,
Charles SeymourCharles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset , sometimes referred to as the "Proud Duke". The son of Charles Seymour, 2nd Baron Seymour of Trowbridge, and Elizabeth Alington , he succeeded his brother Francis Seymour, 5th Duke of Somerset, to the dukedom when the latter was shot in 1678...
, the
Earl of BurlingtonCharles Boyle, 3rd Earl of Cork and 2nd Earl of Burlington, 4th Baron Clifford, PC was a peer, courtier and politician....
, Thomas Pelham-Holles,
Sir Robert WalpoleRobert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
and
Richard Temple, 1st Viscount CobhamField Marshal Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham PC was a British soldier and Whig politician. He was known for his ownership of and modifications to the estate at Stowe and for serving as a political mentor to the young William Pitt.-Early life:Temple was the son of Sir Richard Temple, 3rd...
who gave Vanbrugh several architectural commissions at
StoweStowe is a civil parish and former village about northwest of Buckingham in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire, England. The parish includes the hamlets of Boycott, Dadford and Lamport....
).
Politically, the Club promoted the Whig objectives of a strong
ParliamentThe Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
, a limited
monarchyA monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...
, resistance to France, and primarily the
ProtestantProtestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
succession to the throne. Yet the Kit-Cats always presented their club as more a matter of dining and conviviality, and this reputation has been successfully relayed to posterity. Downes suggests, however, that the Club's origins go back to before the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and that its political importance was much greater before it went public in 1700, in calmer and more Whiggish times. Downes proposes a role for an early Kit-Cat grouping in the armed invasion by William of Orange and the Glorious Revolution. Horace Walpole, son of Kit-Cat Sir Robert Walpole, claims that the respectable middle-aged Club members generally mentioned as "a set of wits" were originally "in reality the patriots that saved Britain", in other words were the active force behind the Glorious Revolution itself. Secret groups tend to be poorly documented, and this sketch of the pre-history of the Club cannot be proved. But as we have seen, young Vanbrugh was indeed in 1688 part of a secret network working for William's invasion. If the roots of the Club go back that far, it is tempting to speculate that Vanbrugh in joining the club was not merely becoming one of a convivial London "set of wits" but was also linking up with old friends and co-conspirators. A hero of the cause who had done time in French prison for it, could have been confident of a warm welcome.
The Haymarket theatre
In 1703, Vanbrugh started buying land and signing backers for the construction of a new theatre in Haymarket, designed by himself and managed by Vanbrugh along with
Thomas BettertonThomas Patrick Betterton , English actor, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.-Apprentice and actor:...
. Vanbrugh and his associate William Congreve. It was intended for the use of an actors' cooperative (see The Provoked Wife below) and hoped to improve the chances of legitimate theatre in London. Theatre was under threat from more colourful types of entertainment such as
operaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
,
jugglingJuggling is a skill involving moving objects for entertainment or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling, in which the juggler throws objects up to catch and toss up again. This may be one object or many objects, at the same time with one or many hands. Jugglers often refer...
,
pantomimePantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
(introduced by
John RichJohn Rich was an important director and theatre manager in 18th century London. He opened the New Theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields and then the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden and began putting on ever more lavish productions...
), animal acts, travelling dance troupes, and famous visiting Italian singers. They also hoped to make a profit, and Vanbrugh optimistically bought up the actors' company, making himself sole owner. He was now bound to pay salaries to the actors and, as it turned out, to manage the theatre, a notorious tightrope act for which he had no experience. The often repeated rumour that the acoustics of the building Vanbrugh had designed were bad is exaggerated (see Milhous ), but the more practical Congreve had become anxious to extricate himself from the project, and Vanbrugh was left spreading himself extremely thin, running a theatre and simultaneously overseeing the building of Blenheim, a project which after June 1705 often took him out of town.
Unsurprisingly under these circumstances, Vanbrugh's management of the Queen's Theatre in Haymarket showed "numerous signs of confusion, inefficiency, missed opportunities, and bad judgment". Having burned his fingers on theatre management, Vanbrugh too extricated himself, expensively, by selling the business in 1708, though without ever collecting much of the putative price. He had put a lot of money, his own and borrowed, into the theatre company, which he was never to recover. It was noted as remarkable by contemporaries that he continued to pay the actors' salaries fully and promptly while they were working for him, just as he always paid the workmen he had hired for construction work; shirking such responsibilities was close to being standard practice in early 18th century England. Vanbrugh himself never seems to have pursued those who owed him money, and throughout his life his finances can at best be described as precarious.
The College of Arms
Vanbrugh's introduction and advancement in the
College of ArmsThe College of Arms, or Heralds’ College, is an office regulating heraldry and granting new armorial bearings for England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
, remain controversial. On 21 June 1703 the obsolete office of Carlisle Herald was revived for Vanbrugh. This appointment was followed by a promotion to the post of
Clarenceux King of ArmsClarenceux King of Arms is an officer of arms at the College of Arms in London. Clarenceux is the senior of the two provincial kings of arms and his jurisdiction is that part of England south of the River Trent. The office almost certainly existed in 1420, and there is a fair degree of...
in March 1704. In 1725 he sold this office to Knox Ward and he told a friend he had "got leave to dispose in earnest, of a place I got in jest". His colleagues' opposition to an ill-gotten appointment ought to have been directed to Lord Carlisle, who as
Deputy Earl MarshalEarl Marshal is a hereditary royal officeholder and chivalric title under the sovereign of the United Kingdom used in England...
, arranged both appointments and against whose wishes they were powerless. Vanbrugh went on to make more friends than enemies at the College, however. The pageantry of state occasions appealed to his theatrical sense, his duties were not difficult, and he appears to have performed them well. In the opinion of a modern
heraldA herald, or, more correctly, a herald of arms, is an officer of arms, ranking between pursuivant and king of arms. The title is often applied erroneously to all officers of arms....
and historian, although the appointment was "incongruous", he was "possibly the most distinguished man who has ever worn a herald's
tabardA tabard is a short coat, either sleeveless, or with short sleeves or shoulder pieces, which was a common item of men's clothing in the Middle Ages, usually for outdoors. It might be belted, or not...
." In May 1706 Lord Halifax and Vanbrugh—representing the octogenarian Garter King of Arms,
Sir Henry St George- Life :He was born in 1581 at Hatley St George, Cambridgeshire. He entered the College of Arms as Rouge Rose pursuivant-extraordinary in 1610 and was promoted to Bluemantle pursuivant the following year, in which capacity accompanied his father in his visitations of Derbyshire and Cheshire...
—led a delegation to
HanoverHanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
to confer the
Order of the GarterThe Most Noble Order of the Garter, founded in 1348, is the highest order of chivalry, or knighthood, existing in England. The order is dedicated to the image and arms of St...
on
Prince GeorgeGeorge II was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Archtreasurer and Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 until his death.George was the last British monarch born outside Great Britain. He was born and brought up in Northern Germany...
. Vaughan Hart has shown how Vanbrugh's interest in arms and heraldry found expression in, and gave meaning to, his architecture.
Marriage and death
In 1719, at St Lawrence Church, York, Vanbrugh married Henrietta Maria Yarborough of
Heslington Hall, aged 26 to his 55. In spite of the age difference, this was by all accounts a happy marriage, which produced two sons. Unlike that of the
rakeA rake, short for rakehell, is a historic term applied to a man who is habituated to immoral conduct, frequently a heartless womanizer. Often a rake was a man who wasted his fortune on gambling, wine, women and song, incurring lavish debts in the process...
heroes and
fopFop became a pejorative term for a foolish man over-concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th century England. Some of the very many similar alternative terms are: "coxcomb", fribble, "popinjay" , fashion-monger, and "ninny"...
s of his plays, Vanbrugh's personal life was without scandal.
Vanbrugh died "of an
asthmaAsthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
" on 26 March 1726, in the modest town house designed by him in 1703 out of the ruins of Whitehall Palace and satirised by
SwiftJonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
as "the goose pie". His married life, however, was mostly spent at Greenwich (then not considered part of London at all) in the house on Maze Hill now known as Vanbrugh Castle, a miniature
ScottishScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
tower houseA tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation.-History:Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountain or limited access areas, in order to command and defend strategic points with reduced forces...
designed by Vanbrugh in the earliest stages of his career. A Grade I listed building, and formerly a RAF Boys' School, it is today divided into private apartments.
Playwright
Vanbrugh arrived in London at a time of scandal and internal drama at London's only theatre company, as a long-running conflict between pinchpenny management and disgruntled actors came to a head and the actors walked out. A new comedy staged with the makeshift remainder of the company in January 1696,
Colley CibberColley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style...
's Love's Last Shift, had a final scene that to Vanbrugh's critical mind demanded a sequel, and even though it was his first play he threw himself into the fray by providing it.
The Relapse
Cibber's
Love's Last ShiftLove's Last Shift, or The Fool in Fashion is an English Restoration comedy by Colley Cibber from 1696.The play is regarded as an early herald of a shift in audience tastes away from the intellectualism and sexual frankness of Restoration comedy and towards the conservative certainties and gender...
Colley Cibber's notorious tear-jerker Love's Last Shift, Or, Virtue Rewarded was written and staged in the eye of a theatrical storm. London's only and mismanaged theatre company, known as the United Company, had split in two in March 1695 when the senior actors began operating their own acting cooperative, and the next season was one of cutthroat rivalry between the two companies.
Cibber, an inconspicuous young actor still employed by the parent company, seized this moment of unique demand for new plays and launched his career on two fronts by writing a play with a big, flamboyant part for himself: the Frenchified fop Sir Novelty Fashion. Backed up by Cibber's own uninhibited performance, Sir Novelty delighted the audiences. In the serious part of Love's Last Shift, wifely patience is tried by an out-of-control
Restoration rakeA rake, short for rakehell, is a historic term applied to a man who is habituated to immoral conduct, frequently a heartless womanizer. Often a rake was a man who wasted his fortune on gambling, wine, women and song, incurring lavish debts in the process...
husband, and the perfect wife is celebrated and rewarded in a climactic finale where the cheating husband kneels to her and expresses the depth of his repentance.
Love's Last Shift has not been staged again since the early 18th century and is read only by the most dedicated scholars, who sometimes express distaste for its businesslike combination of four explicit acts of sex and rakishness with one of sententious reform (see Hume). If Cibber indeed was deliberately attempting to appeal simultaneously to rakish and respectable Londoners, it worked: the play was a great box-office hit.
Sequel:
The RelapseThe Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by John Vanbrugh. The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, or, Virtue Rewarded....
Vanbrugh's witty sequel The Relapse, Or, Virtue in Danger, offered to the United Company six weeks later, questions the justice of women's position in marriage at this time. He sends new sexual temptations in the way of not only the reformed husband but also the patient wife, and allows them to react in more credible and less predictable ways than in their original context, lending the flat characters from Love's Last Shift a dimension that at least some critics are willing to consider
psychologicalPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
(see Hume ).
In a
tricksterIn mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
subplot, Vanbrugh provides the more traditional Restoration attraction of an overly well-dressed and exquisite fop, Lord Foppington, a brilliant re-creation of Cibber's Sir Novelty Fashion in Love's Last Shift (Sir Novelty has simply in The Relapse bought himself the title of "Lord Foppington" through the corrupt system of Royal title sales). Critics of Restoration comedy are unanimous in declaring Lord Foppington "the greatest of all Restoration fops" (Dobrée), by virtue of being not merely laughably affected, but also "brutal, evil, and smart" (Hume ).
The Relapse, however, came very close to not being performed at all. The United Company had lost all its senior performers, and had great difficulty in finding and keeping actors of sufficient skills for the large cast required by The Relapse. Members of that cast had to be kept from defecting to the rival actors' cooperative, had to be "seduced" (as the legal term was) back when they did defect, and had to be blandished into attending rehearsals which dragged out into ten months and brought the company to the threshold of bankruptcy. "They have no company at all", reported a contemporary letter on the November 19, 1696 "and unless a new play comes out on Saturday revives their reputation, they must break". That new play, The Relapse, did turn out a tremendous success that saved the company, not least by virtue of Colley Cibber again bringing down the house with his second impersonation of Lord Foppington. "This play (the Relapse)", writes Cibber in his autobiography forty years later, "from its new and easy Turn of Wit, had great Success".
The Provoked Wife
Vanbrugh's second original comedy, The Provoked Wife, followed soon after, performed by the rebel actors' company. This play is different in tone from the largely farcical The Relapse, and adapted to the greater acting skills of the rebels. Vanbrugh had good reason to offer his second play to the new company, which had got off to a brilliant start by premièring Congreve's Love For Love, the greatest London box-office success for years. The actors' cooperative boasted the established star performers of the age, and Vanbrugh tailored The Provoked Wife to their specialities. While The Relapse had been robustly phrased to be suitable for amateurs and minor acting talents, he could count on versatile professionals like Thomas Betterton, Elizabeth Barry, and the rising young star
Anne BracegirdleAnne Bracegirdle was an English actress.Little is known of Bracegirdle's early life. Her precise date of birth is a source of great dispute due to conflicting records of her life. She was baptised in Northampton on 15 November 1671, although her tombstone says that she died at the age of 85...
to do justice to characters of depth and nuance.
The Provoked Wife is a comedy, but Elizabeth Barry who played the abused wife was especially famous as a tragic actress, and for her power of "moving the passions", i.e., moving an audience to pity and tears. Barry and the younger Bracegirdle had often worked together as a tragic/comic heroine pair to bring audiences the typically tragic/comic rollercoaster experience of Restoration plays. Vanbrugh takes advantage of this schema and these actresses to deepen audience sympathy for the unhappily married Lady Brute, even as she fires off her witty ripostes. In the intimate conversational dialogue between Lady Brute and her niece Bellinda (Bracegirdle), and especially in the star part of Sir John Brute the brutish husband (Betterton), which was hailed as one of the peaks of Thomas Betterton's remarkable career, The Provoked Wife is something as unusual as a Restoration
problem playThe problem play is a form of drama that emerged during the 19th century as part of the wider movement of realism in the arts. It deals with contentious social issues through debates between the characters on stage, who typically represent conflicting points of view within a realistic social...
. The premise of the plot, that a wife trapped in an abusive marriage might consider either leaving it or taking a lover, outraged some sections of Restoration society.
Other Works
- Aesop (1697)
- The False Friend (1702)
- The Confederacy (1705)
- The Mistake (1705)
Changing audience taste
In 1698, Vanbrugh's argumentative and sexually frank plays were singled out for special attention by
Jeremy CollierJeremy Collier was an English theatre critic, non-juror bishop and theologian.-Life:Born in Stow cum Quy, Cambridgeshire, Collier was educated at Caius College, University of Cambridge, receiving the BA and MA . A supporter of James II, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and...
in his
Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English StageIn March of 1698, Jeremy Collier published his anti-theater pamphlet, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage; in the pamphlet, Collier attacks a number of playwrights: William Wycherley, John Dryden, William Congreve, John Vanbrugh, and Thomas D’Urfey...
, particularly for their failure to impose exemplary morality by appropriate rewards and punishments in the fifth act. Vanbrugh laughed at these charges and published a joking reply, where he accused the clergyman Collier of being more sensitive to unflattering portrayals of the clergy than to real irreligion. However, rising public opinion was already on Collier's side. The intellectual and sexually explicit Restoration comedy style was becoming less and less acceptable to audiences and was soon to be replaced by a drama of sententious morality. Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, with its reformed rake and sentimental reconciliation scene, can be seen as a forerunner of this drama.
Although Vanbrugh continued to work for the stage in many ways, he produced no more original plays. With the change in audience taste away from Restoration comedy, he turned his creative energies from original composition to dramatic adaptation/translation, theatre management, and architecture.
Architect
As an architect (or surveyor, as the term then was) Vanbrugh is thought to have had no formal training (see "Early life" above). To what extent Vanbrugh's exposure to
contemporary French architectureFrench Baroque is a form of Baroque architecture that evolved in France during the reigns of Louis XIII , Louis XIV and Louis XV...
during years of imprisonment in France affected him is hard to gauge, in April 1691 he was transferred to
Château de VincennesThe Château de Vincennes is a massive 14th and 17th century French royal castle in the town of Vincennes, to the east of Paris, now a suburb of the metropolis.-History:...
in the months he spent as a prisoner there he would have got to know the architect
Louis Le VauLouis Le Vau was a French Classical architect who worked for Louis XIV of France. He was born and died in Paris.He was responsible, with André Le Nôtre and Charles Le Brun, for the redesign of the château of Vaux-le-Vicomte. His later works included the Palace of Versailles and his collaboration...
's grand classical work (1656–61) in the château well. On his release from prison (he was at the Bastille by then) on the 22 November 1692 he spent a short time in
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, there he would have seen much recent architecture including
Les InvalidesLes Invalides , officially known as L'Hôtel national des Invalides , is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the building's...
, Le Vau's
Collège des Quatre-NationsThe Collège des Quatre-Nations , also known as the Collège Mazarin after its founder, was one of the colleges of the historic University of Paris. It was founded through a bequest by the Cardinal Mazarin...
and
Claude PerraultClaude Perrault is best known as the architect of the eastern range of the Louvre Palace in Paris , but he also achieved success as a physician and anatomist, and as an author, who wrote treatises on physics and natural history.Perrault was born and died in Paris...
's east wing of the Louvre Palace. His inexperience was compensated for by his unerring eye for
perspectivePerspective, in context of vision and visual perception, is the way in which objects appear to the eye based on their spatial attributes; or their dimensions and the position of the eye relative to the objects...
and detail and his close working relationship with
Nicholas HawksmoorNicholas Hawksmoor was a British architect born in Nottinghamshire, probably in East Drayton.-Life:Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family, almost certainly in East Drayton, Nottinghamshire. On his death he was to leave property at nearby Ragnall, Dunham and a...
. Hawksmoor, a former clerk of Sir
Christopher WrenSir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...
, was to be Vanbrugh's collaborator in many of his most ambitious projects, including Castle Howard and Blenheim. During his almost thirty years as a practising architect, Vanbrugh designed and worked on numerous buildings. More often than not his work was a rebuild or remodel, such as that of
Kimbolton CastleKimbolton Castle in Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire, is best known as the final home of King Henry VIII's first queen, Catherine of Aragon. Originally a medieval castle but converted into a stately palace, it was the family seat of the Dukes of Manchester from 1615 until 1950...
, where Vanbrugh had to follow the instructions of his patron. Consequently these houses, which often claim Vanbrugh as their architect, do not best display his own architectural concepts and ideas. In the summer of 1699 as part of his architectural education Vanbrugh made a tour of northern England, writing to
Charles Montagu, 1st Duke of ManchesterCharles Edward Montagu, 1st Duke of Manchester, 4th Earl of Manchester , son of Robert Montagu, 3rd Earl of Manchester, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and succeeded to his father's earldom in 1683...
, (he was still an Earl at the time) on Christmas day of that year: 'I have seen most of the great houses in the North, as Ld Nottings (sic): Duke of Leeds Chattesworth (sic) &C.' This itinerary likely included many of the great
ElizabethanElizabethan architecture is the term given to early Renaissance architecture in England, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Historically, the period corresponds to the Cinquecento in Italy, the Early Renaissance in France, and the Plateresque style in Spain...
houses, including:
Burghley HouseBurghley House is a grand 16th-century country house near the town of Stamford, Lincolnshire, England...
,
Wollaton HallWollaton Hall is a country house standing on a small but prominent hill in Wollaton, Nottingham, England. Wollaton Park is the area of parkland that the stately house stands in. The house itself is a natural history museum, with other museums in the out-buildings...
,
Hardwick HallHardwick Hall , in Derbyshire, is one of the most significant Elizabethan country houses in England. In common with its architect Robert Smythson's other works at both Longleat House and Wollaton Hall, Hardwick Hall is one of the earliest examples of the English interpretation of the Renaissance...
&
Bolsover CastleBolsover Castle is a castle in Bolsover, Derbyshire, England .-History:It was built by the Peverel family in the 12th century and became Crown property in 1155 when the third William Peverel fled into exile...
, whose use of towers, complex skylines, bow widows and other features would be reinterpreted in Vanbrugh's own buildings.
Though Vanbrugh is best known in connection with stately houses, the parlous state of London's 18th century streets did not escape his attention. In the
London JournalJames Boswell's London Journal is a published version of the daily journal he kept between the years 1762 and 1763 while in London. Along with many more of his private papers, it was found in the 1920s at Malahide Castle in Ireland, and first published in 1950. In it, Boswell, then a young Scotsman...
of 16 March 1722–23,
James BoswellJames Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....
comments:
Vanbrugh's chosen style was the
baroqueBaroque architecture is a term used to describe the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late sixteenth century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church and...
, which had been spreading across Europe during the 17th century, promoted by, among others,
BerniniGian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age and also a prominent architect...
and
Le VauLouis Le Vau was a French Classical architect who worked for Louis XIV of France. He was born and died in Paris.He was responsible, with André Le Nôtre and Charles Le Brun, for the redesign of the château of Vaux-le-Vicomte. His later works included the Palace of Versailles and his collaboration...
. The first baroque country house built in England was
Chatsworth HouseChatsworth House is a stately home in North Derbyshire, England, northeast of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield . It is the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, and has been home to his family, the Cavendish family, since Bess of Hardwick settled at Chatsworth in 1549.Standing on the east bank of the...
, designed by
William TalmanWilliam Talman was an English architect and landscape designer. A pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, in 1678 he and Thomas Apprice gained the office of King's Waiter in the Port of London...
three years before Castle Howard. In the contest for the commission of Castle Howard, the untrained and untried Vanbrugh astonishingly managed to out-charm and out-clubman the professional but less socially adept Talman and to persuade the
Earl of CarlisleCharles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, PC was a British statesman and member of the peerage of England.Charles Howard was the eldest son of Edward Howard and inherited his title on the death of his father in 1692. He married in 1683 Lady Anne de Vere Capell, daughter of Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of...
to give the great opportunity to him instead. Seizing it, Vanbrugh instigated European baroque's metamorphosis into a subtle, almost understated version that became known as English baroque. Three of Vanbrugh's designs act as milestones for evaluating this process:
- Castle Howard
Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, north of York. One of the grandest private residences in Britain, most of it was built between 1699 and 1712 for the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, to a design by Sir John Vanbrugh...
, commissioned in 1699;
- Blenheim Palace
Blenheim Palace is a monumental country house situated in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, residence of the dukes of Marlborough. It is the only non-royal non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title of palace. The palace, one of England's largest houses, was built between...
, commissioned in 1704;
- Seaton Delaval Hall
Seaton Delaval Hall is a Grade I listed country house in Northumberland, England. It is near the coast just north of Newcastle upon Tyne. Located between Seaton Sluice and Seaton Delaval, it was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh in 1718 for Admiral George Delaval and is now owned by the National...
, begun in 1718.
Work on each of these projects overlapped with that on the next, providing a natural progression of thoughts and style.
Castle Howard
Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of CarlisleCharles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, PC was a British statesman and member of the peerage of England.Charles Howard was the eldest son of Edward Howard and inherited his title on the death of his father in 1692. He married in 1683 Lady Anne de Vere Capell, daughter of Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of...
, a fellow member of the
Kit-Cat ClubThe Kit-Cat Club was an early 18th century English club in London with strong political and literary associations, committed to the furtherance of Whig objectives, meeting at the Trumpet tavern in London, and at Water Oakley in the Berkshire countryside.The first meetings were held at a tavern in...
, commissioned Vanbrugh in 1699 to design his
mansionA mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...
, often described as England's first truly baroque building. The baroque style at Castle Howard is the most European that Vanbrugh ever used.
Castle Howard, with its immense corridors in segmental
colonnadeIn classical architecture, a colonnade denotes a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building....
s leading from the main entrance block to the flanking wings, its centre crowned by a great domed tower complete with
cupolaIn architecture, a cupola is a small, most-often dome-like, structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome....
, is very much in the school of classic European baroque. It combined aspects of design that had only appeared occasionally, if at all, in English architecture: John Webb's Greenwich Palace, Wren's unexecuted design for Greenwich, which like Castle Howard was dominated by a domed centre block, and of course Talman's Chatsworth. A possible inspiration for Castle Howard was also
Vaux-le-VicomteThe Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte is a baroque French château located in Maincy, near Melun, 55 km southeast of Paris in the Seine-et-Marne département of France...
in France
The interiors are extremely dramatic, the Great Hall rising 80 feet (24 m) into the cupola.
ScagliolaScagliola , is a technique for producing stucco columns, sculptures, and other architectural elements that resemble inlays in marble and semi-precious stones...
, and
Corinthian columnsThe Corinthian order is one of the three principal classical orders of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric and Ionic. When classical architecture was revived during the Renaissance, two more orders were added to the canon, the Tuscan order and the Composite order...
abound, and galleries linked by soaring arches give the impression of an opera stage-set — doubtless the intention of the architect.
Castle Howard was acclaimed a success. This fantastical building, unparalleled in England, with its facades and roofs decorated by pilasters, statuary, and flowing ornamental carving, ensured that baroque became an overnight success. While the greater part of Castle Howard was inhabited and completed by 1709, the finishing touches were to continue for much of Vanbrugh's lifetime. The west wing was finally completed after Vanbrugh's death, to an altered design. The acclaim of the work at Castle Howard led to Vanbrugh's most famous commission, architect for Blenheim Palace.
Blenheim Palace
The
Duke of Marlborough'sJohn Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Prince of Mindelheim, KG, PC , was an English soldier and statesman whose career spanned the reigns of five monarchs through the late 17th and early 18th centuries...
forces defeated King
Louis XIV'sLouis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
army at
BlenheimThe Battle of Blenheim , fought on 13 August 1704, was a major battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. Louis XIV of France sought to knock Emperor Leopold out of the war by seizing Vienna, the Habsburg capital, and gain a favourable peace settlement...
, a village on the
DanubeThe Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
in 1704. Marlborough's reward, from a grateful nation, was to be a splendid country seat, and the Duke himself chose fellow Kit-Cat John Vanbrugh to be the architect. Work began on the palace in 1705, though as Vanbrugh wasn't a trained architect he worked alongside
Nicholas HawksmoorNicholas Hawksmoor was a British architect born in Nottinghamshire, probably in East Drayton.-Life:Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family, almost certainly in East Drayton, Nottinghamshire. On his death he was to leave property at nearby Ragnall, Dunham and a...
on the project.
Blenheim Palace was conceived to be not only a grand country house, but a national monument. Consequently, the light baroque style used at Castle Howard would have been unsuitable for what is in effect a
war memorialA war memorial is a building, monument, statue or other edifice to celebrate a war or victory, or to commemorate those who died or were injured in war.-Historic usage:...
. It is in truth more of a
castleA castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...
, or
citadelA citadel is a fortress for protecting a town, sometimes incorporating a castle. The term derives from the same Latin root as the word "city", civis, meaning citizen....
, than a
palaceA palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word itself is derived from the Latin name Palātium, for Palatine Hill, one of the seven hills in Rome. In many parts of Europe, the...
. As it was designed as a national monument first and a comfortable family home second, Vanbrugh had many arguments with the Duchess who wanted the Palace to be a comfortable country house for her family. As a result of these arguments Vanbrugh resigned before the palace was completed. The qualities of the building are best illustrated by the massive East Gate (illustration, below, left), set in the
curtain wallA curtain wall is a defensive wall between two bastions of a castle or fortress.In earlier designs of castle the curtain walls were often built to a considerable height and were fronted by a ditch or moat to make assault difficult....
of the service block, it has been described as resembling an impregnable entrance to a walled city. The gate, its tapering walls creating an illusion of greater height, also serves as
water towerA water tower or elevated water tower is a large elevated drinking water storage container constructed to hold a water supply at a height sufficient to pressurize a water distribution system....
for the palace, thus confounding those of Vanbrugh's critics, such as the Duchess, who accused him of impracticability.
Blenheim, the largest non-royal domestic building in England, consists of three blocks, the centre containing the living and
state roomA state room in a large European mansion is usually one of a suite of very grand rooms which were designed to impress. The term was most widely used in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were the most lavishly decorated in the house and contained the finest works of art...
s, and two flanking rectangular wings both built around a central
courtyardA court or courtyard is an enclosed area, often a space enclosed by a building that is open to the sky. These areas in inns and public buildings were often the primary meeting places for some purposes, leading to the other meanings of court....
: one contains the
stableA stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals...
s, and the other the
kitchenA kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation.In the West, a modern residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running water, a refrigerator and kitchen cabinets arranged according to a modular design. Many households have a...
s,
laundriesLaundry is a noun that refers to the act of washing clothing and linens, the place where that washing is done, and/or that which needs to be, is being, or has been laundered...
, and storehouses. If Castle Howard was the first truly baroque building in England, then Blenheim Palace is the most definitive. While Castle Howard is a dramatic assembly of restless masses, Blenheim is altogether of a more solid construction, relying on tall slender windows and monumental statuary on the roofs to lighten the mass of yellow stone.
The suite of state rooms placed on the
piano nobileThe piano nobile is the principal floor of a large house, usually built in one of the styles of classical renaissance architecture...
were designed to be overpowering and magnificent displays, rather than warm, or comfortable. Cosy,
middle classThe middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
comfort was not the intention at
VersaillesVersailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
, the great palace of Marlborough's foe, and it was certainly not deemed a consideration in the palace built to house the conqueror of Versailles' master.
As was common in the 18th century, personal comfort was sacrificed to perspective. Windows were to adorn the facades, as well as light the interior. Blenheim was designed as a theatre piece both externally and also from the 67 foot (20 m) high great hall, leading to the huge
frescoFresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
ed
saloonA state room in a large European mansion is usually one of a suite of very grand rooms which were designed to impress. The term was most widely used in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were the most lavishly decorated in the house and contained the finest works of art...
, all designed on an axis with the 134 foot (41 m) high column of victory in the grounds, with the trees planted in the battle positions of Marlborough's soldiers. Over the south portico (illustrated right), itself a massive and dense construction of piers and columns, definitely not designed in the Palladian manner for elegant protection from the sun, a huge bust of Louis XIV is forced to look down on the splendours and rewards of his conqueror. Whether this placement and design was an ornamental feature created by Vanbrugh, or an ironic joke by Marlborough, is not known. However, as an architectural composition it is a unique example of baroque ornament.
At Blenheim, Vanbrugh developed baroque from the mere ornamental to a denser, more solid, form, where the massed stone became the ornament. The great arched gates and the huge solid portico were ornament in themselves, and the whole mass was considered rather than each facade. As the palace is still treated as an important part of English heritage, it became a
World heritage siteA UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...
in 1987.
Seaton Delaval Hall
Seaton Delaval HallSeaton Delaval Hall is a Grade I listed country house in Northumberland, England. It is near the coast just north of Newcastle upon Tyne. Located between Seaton Sluice and Seaton Delaval, it was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh in 1718 for Admiral George Delaval and is now owned by the National...
was Vanbrugh's final work, this northern, seemingly rather bleak country house is considered his finest architectural masterpiece;
by this stage in his architectural career Vanbrugh was a master of baroque, he had taken this form of architecture not only beyond the flamboyant continental baroque of Castle Howard, but also past the more severe but still decorated Blenheim.
OrnamentIn architecture and decorative art, ornament is a decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornament does not include human figures, and if present they...
was almost disguised: a recess or a pillar was not placed for support, but to create a play of light or shadow. The
silhouetteA silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a basically featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. Although the art form has been popular since the mid-18th century, the term “silhouette” was seldom used until the early decades...
of the building was of equal, if not greater, importance than the interior layout. In every aspect of the house, subtlety was the keyword.
Built between 1718 and 1728 for Admiral George Delaval, it replaced the existing house on the site. It is possible that the design of Seaton Delaval was influenced by Palladio's
Villa Foscarithumb|Villa Foscari: facing the [[Brenta]]Villa Foscari is a patrician villa in Mira, near Venice, northern Italy, designed by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio...
(sometimes known as "La Malcontenta"), built circa 1555. Both have
rusticatedthumb|upright|Two different styles of rustication in the [[Palazzo Medici-Riccardi]] in [[Florence]].In classical architecture rustication is an architectural feature that contrasts in texture with the smoothly finished, squared block masonry surfaces called ashlar...
facades and similar demilune windows over a non-porticoed entrance. Even the large
atticAn attic is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building . Attic is generally the American/Canadian reference to it...
gableA gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...
at Villa Foscari hints at the
clerestoryClerestory is an architectural term that historically denoted an upper level of a Roman basilica or of the nave of a Romanesque or Gothic church, the walls of which rise above the rooflines of the lower aisles and are pierced with windows. In modern usage, clerestory refers to any high windows...
of Seaton's great hall.
The design concept Vanbrugh drew up was similar to that employed at Castle Howard and Blenheim: a
corps de logisCorps de logis is the architectural term which refers to the principal block of a large, usually classical, mansion or palace. It contains the principal rooms, state apartments and an entry. The grandest and finest rooms are often on the first floor above the ground level: this floor is the...
between two flanking wings. At Seaton Delaval the wings have a centre projection of three bays, crowned by pediment, either side of which are 7 bays of sash windows above a ground floor
arcadeAn arcade is a succession of arches, each counterthrusting the next, supported by columns or piers or a covered walk enclosed by a line of such arches on one or both sides. In warmer or wet climates, exterior arcades provide shelter for pedestrians....
. However, Seaton Delaval was to be on a much smaller scale. Work began in 1718 and continued for ten years. The building is an advancement on the style of Blenheim, rather than the earlier castle Howard. The principal block, or
corps de logisCorps de logis is the architectural term which refers to the principal block of a large, usually classical, mansion or palace. It contains the principal rooms, state apartments and an entry. The grandest and finest rooms are often on the first floor above the ground level: this floor is the...
, containing, as at Blenheim and Castle Howard, the principal state and living room, forms the centre of a three-sided court. Towers crowned by
balustradesA baluster is a moulded shaft, square or of lathe-turned form, one of various forms of spindle in woodwork, made of stone or wood and sometimes of metal, standing on a unifying footing, and supporting the coping of a parapet or the handrail of a staircase. Multiplied in this way, they form a...
and
pinnacleA pinnacle is an architectural ornament originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire...
s give the house something of what Vanbrugh called his castle air.
Seaton Delaval is one of the few houses Vanbrugh designed alone without the aid of Nicholas Hawksmoor. The sobriety of their joint work has sometimes been attributed to Hawksmoor, and yet Seaton Delaval is a very sombre house indeed. Whereas Castle Howard could successfully be set down in
DresdenDresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
or
WürzburgWürzburg is a city in the region of Franconia which lies in the northern tip of Bavaria, Germany. Located at the Main River, it is the capital of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. The regional dialect is Franconian....
, the austerity and solidity of Seaton Delaval firmly belongs in
NorthumberlandNorthumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...
landscape. Vanbrugh, in the final stage in his career, was fully liberated from the rules of the architects of a generation earlier. The rustic stonework is used for the entire facade, including on the entrance facade, the pairs of twin columns supporting little more than a stone cornice. The twin columns are severe and utilitarian, and yet ornament, as they provide no structural use. This is part of the furtive quality of the baroque of Seaton Delaval: the ornamental appears as a display of strength and mass.
The likewise severe, but perfectly proportioned, garden facade has at its centre a four columned,
balconyBalcony , a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade.-Types:The traditional Maltese balcony is a wooden closed balcony projecting from a...
-roofed portico. Here the slight fluting of the stone columns seems almost excessive ornament. As at Blenheim, the central block is dominated by the raised
clerestoryClerestory is an architectural term that historically denoted an upper level of a Roman basilica or of the nave of a Romanesque or Gothic church, the walls of which rise above the rooflines of the lower aisles and are pierced with windows. In modern usage, clerestory refers to any high windows...
of the great hall, adding to the drama of the building's silhouette, but unlike Vanbrugh's other great houses, no statuary decorates the roof-scape here. The decoration is provided solely by a simple balustrade hiding the roof line, and chimneys disguised as
finialThe finial is an architectural device, typically carved in stone and employed decoratively to emphasize the apex of a gable or any of various distinctive ornaments at the top, end, or corner of a building or structure. Smaller finials can be used as a decorative ornament on the ends of curtain rods...
s to the balustrading of the low towers. The massing of the stone, the
colonnadeIn classical architecture, a colonnade denotes a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building....
s of the flanking wings, the heavy stonework and intricate recesses all create light and shade which is ornament in itself.
Among architects, only Vanbrugh could have taken for his inspiration one of Palladio's masterpieces, and while retaining the humanist values of the building, alter and adapt it, into a unique form of baroque unseen elsewhere in Europe.
Architectural reputation
Vanbrugh's prompt success as an architect can be attributed to his friendships with the influential of the day. No less than five of his architectural patrons were fellow members of the
Kit-Cat ClubThe Kit-Cat Club was an early 18th century English club in London with strong political and literary associations, committed to the furtherance of Whig objectives, meeting at the Trumpet tavern in London, and at Water Oakley in the Berkshire countryside.The first meetings were held at a tavern in...
. In 1702, through the influence of Charles Howard, Earl of Carlisle, Vanbrugh was appointed
comptrollerA comptroller is a management level position responsible for supervising the quality of accounting and financial reporting of an organization.In British government, the Comptroller General or Comptroller and Auditor General is in most countries the external auditor of the budget execution of the...
of the Royal Works (now the Board of Works, where several of his designs may still be seen). In 1703, he was appointed commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, which was under construction at this time, and succeeded Wren as the official architect (or Surveyor), while Hawksmoor was appointed Site Architect. Vanbrugh's small but conspicuous final changes to the nearly completed building were considered a fine interpretation of Wren's original plans and intentions. Thus what was intended as an infirmary and hostel for destitute retired sailors was transformed into a magnificent national monument. His work here is said to have impressed both Queen Anne and her government, and is directly responsible for his subsequent success.
Vanbrugh's reputation still suffers from accusations of extravagance, impracticability and a bombastic imposition of his own will on his clients. Ironically, all of these unfounded charges derive from Blenheim — Vanbrugh's selection as architect of Blenheim was never completely popular. The Duchess, the formidable
Sarah ChurchillSarah Churchill , Duchess of Marlborough rose to be one of the most influential women in British history as a result of her close friendship with Queen Anne of Great Britain.Sarah's friendship and influence with Princess Anne was widely known, and leading public figures...
, particularly wanted Sir
Christopher WrenSir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...
. However, eventually a
warrantMost often, the term warrant refers to a specific type of authorization; a writ issued by a competent officer, usually a judge or magistrate, which permits an otherwise illegal act that would violate individual rights and affords the person executing the writ protection from damages if the act is...
signed by the
Earl of GodolphinSir Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin, KG, PC was a leading English politician of the late 17th and early 18th centuries...
, the parliamentary treasurer, appointed Vanbrugh, and outlined his remit. Sadly, nowhere did this warrant mention Queen, or Crown. This error provided the get-out clause for the state when the costs and political infighting escalated.
Though Parliament had voted funds for the building of Blenheim, no exact sum had ever been fixed upon, and certainly no provision had been made for inflation. Almost from the outset, funds had been intermittent. Queen Anne paid some of them, but with growing reluctance and lapses, following her frequent altercations with her one time best friend, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. After the Duchess's final argument with the Queen in 1712, all state money ceased and work came to a halt. £220,000 had already been spent and £45,000 was owing to workmen. The Marlboroughs went into exile on the continent, and did not return until after Queen Anne's death in 1714.
The day after the Queen's death the Marlboroughs returned, and were reinstated in favour at the court of the new King
George IGeorge I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 until his death, and ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire from 1698....
. The 64-year-old Duke now decided to complete the project at his own expense; in 1716 work re-started and Vanbrugh was left to rely entirely upon the means of the Duke of Marlborough himself. Already discouraged and upset by the reception the palace was receiving from the
WhigThe Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...
factions, the final blow for Vanbrugh came when the Duke was incapacitated in 1717 by a severe stroke, and the thrifty (and hostile) Duchess took control. The Duchess blamed Vanbrugh entirely for the growing extravagance of the palace, and its general design: that her husband and government had approved them, she discounted. (In fairness to her, it must be mentioned that the Duke of Marlborough had contributed £60,000 to the initial cost, which, supplemented by Parliament, should have built a monumental house.) Following a meeting with the Duchess, Vanbrugh left the building site in a rage, insisting that the new masons, carpenters and craftsmen were inferior to those he had employed. The master craftsmen he had patronised, however, such as
Grinling GibbonsGrinling Gibbons was an English sculptor and wood carver known for his work in England, including St Paul's Cathedral, Blenheim Palace and Hampton Court Palace. He was born and educated in Holland where his father was a merchant...
, refused to work for the lower rates paid by the Marlboroughs. The craftsmen brought in by the Duchess, under the guidance of furniture designer
James MooreJames Moore was an 18th-century cabinet maker in London who worked for George I. He was in partnership with John Gumley from 1714...
, completed the work in perfect imitation of the greater masters, so perhaps there was fault and intransigence on both sides in this famed argument.
Vanbrugh was deeply distressed by the turn of events. The rows and resulting rumours had damaged his reputation, and the palace he had nurtured like a child was forbidden to him. In 1719, while the duchess was "not at home", Vanbrugh was able to view the palace in secret; but when he and his wife, with the Earl of Carlisle, visited the completed Blenheim as members of the viewing public in 1725, they were refused admission to even enter the park. The palace had been completed by Nicholas Hawksmoor.
That Vanbrugh's work at Blenheim has been the subject of criticism can largely be blamed on those, including the Duchess, who failed to understand the chief reason for its construction: to celebrate a martial triumph. In the achievement of this remit, Vanbrugh was as triumphant as was Marlborough on the field of battle.
After Vanbrugh's death
Abel EvansAbel Evans was an English clergyman, academic, and poet, a self-conscious follower of John Milton.-Life:He was son of Abel Evans of London, born in February 1679. He entered Merchant Taylors' School in 1685. He was elected probationary fellow of St. John's College, Oxford , proceeded regularly to...
suggested this as his epitaph:
Under this stone, reader, survey
Dead Sir John Vanbrugh's house of clay.
Lie heavy on him, Earth! For he
Laid many heavy loads on thee!
Throughout the Georgian period reaction to Vanbrugh's architecture varied.
VoltaireFrançois-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
, who visited Blenheim Palace in the autumn of 1727, described it as 'a great mass of stone with neither charm nor taste' and thought that if the apartments 'were but as spacious as the walls thick, the house would be commodious enough'.
In a letter dated 10 March 1740, the
GermanThe Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
Jacob Friedrich, Baron Bielfeld had this to say about Vanbrugh:
This building (Blenheim) has been severely censured, and I agree that it is not entirely exempt from rational censure as it is too much loaded with columns and other heavy ornaments. But if we consider that Sir John Vanbrugh was to construct a building of endless duration, that no bounds were set to expense, and that an edifice was required that should strike with awe and surprise even at a distance; the architect may be excused for having sacrificed, in some degree, the elegance of design to multiplicity of ornament. All the several parts are moreover exactly calculated, all the rules of art are well observed, and this immense fabric reminds us, on the first glance, of the majesty and state of those of Greece and ancient Rome. When we behold it a distance, it appears not as a single palace, but as an entire city. We arrive at it by a stately bridge of a single arch, and which is itself a masterpiece of architecture. I have contracted a very intimate friend ship with the son of Sir John Vanbrugh, who has lately obtained a company in the foot guards, and is a young gentleman of real merit. He has shown me, not only all the designs of his father, but also two houses of his building, one near Whitehall, and the other at Greenwich. They are indeed mere models of houses, but notwithstanding their confined situation, there are everywhere traces of a master to be discovered in their execution. The vulgar critic finds too many columns and ornaments; but the true connoisseur sees that all these ornaments are accompanied with utility, and that an inventive genius is visible in every part. This architect was likewise author of several comedies, which are indeed written in a style that is rather licentious, but at the same time are resplendent with wit and vivacity. So true it is, that genius is not confined to one subject, but wherever exercised, is equally manifest.
In 1766
Lord StanhopePhilip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield PC KG was a British statesman and man of letters.A Whig, Lord Stanhope, as he was known until his father's death in 1726, was born in London. After being educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he went on the Grand Tour of the continent...
described the Roman amphitheatre at
NîmesNîmes is the capital of the Gard department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. Nîmes has a rich history, dating back to the Roman Empire, and is a popular tourist destination.-History:...
as 'Ugly and clumsy enough to have been the work of Vanbrugh if it had been in England.' In 1772 Horace Walpole described Castle Howard thus:
Nobody had informed me that I should at one view see a palace, a town, a fortified city, temples on high places, woods worthy of being each a metropolis of the Druids, vales connected to hills by other woods, the noblest lawn in the world fenced by half the horizon, and a mausoleum that would tempt one to be buried alive; in short I have seen gigantic places before, but never a sublime one.'
Walpole was not as complimentary of Blenheim, describing it as 'execrable within, without & almost all round' and went on 'a quarry of stone that looked at a distance like a great house'. In 1773
Robert AdamRobert Adam was a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam , Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him...
and James Adam in the preface to their Works in Architecture wrote that:
Sir John Vanbrugh's genius was of the first class; and, in point of movement, novelty and ingenuity, his works have not been exceeded by anything in modern times. We should certainly quote Blenheim and Castle Howard as great examples of these perfections in preference to any work of our own, or of any other modern architect; but unluckily for the reputation of this excellent artist, his taste kept no pace with his genius, and his works are so crowded with barbarisms and absurdities, and so born down by their own preposterous weight, that none but the discerning can separate their merits from their defects. In the hands of the ingenious artist, who knows how to polish and refine and bring them into use, we have always regarded his productions as rough jewels of inestimable value'.
In 1786 Sir
Joshua ReynoldsSir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...
wrote in his 13th Discourse '...in the buildings of Vanbrugh, who was a poet as well as an architect, there is a greater display of imagination, than we shall find perhaps in any other.' In 1796
Uvedale PriceSir Uvedale Price, 1st Baronet , author of the Essay on the Picturesque, As Compared With The Sublime and The Beautiful , was a Herefordshire landowner who was at the heart of the 'Picturesque debate' of the 1790s...
described Blenheim as 'uniting in one building the beauty and magnificence of Grecian architecture, the picturesqueness of the Gothic, and the massive grandeur of a castle.' In his fifth Royal Academy lecture of 1810, Sir
John SoaneSir John Soane, RA was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. His architectural works are distinguished by their clean lines, massing of simple form, decisive detailing, careful proportions and skilful use of light sources...
said that 'By studying his works the artist will acquire a bold flight of irregular fancy', calling him 'the Shakespeare of architects'.
Sir Robert SmirkeSir Robert Smirke was an English architect, one of the leaders of Greek Revival architecture his best known building in that style is the British Museum, though he also designed using other architectural styles...
was less complimentary 'Heaviness was the lightest of (Vanbrugh's) faults... The Italian style...which he contrived to caricature...is apparent in all his works; he helped himself liberally to its vices, contributed many of his own, and by an unfortunate misfortune adding impurity to that which was already greatly impure, left it disgusting and often odious'.
Charles Robert CockerellCharles Robert Cockerell was an English architect, archaeologist, and writer.-Life:Charles Robert Cockerell was educated at Westminster School from 1802. From the age of sixteen, he trained in the architectural practice of his father, Samuel Pepys Cockerell...
had this to say about Castle Howard 'great play & charm in Hall. I could not leave it. Vast effect, movement in staircases &c. good effect of long passages on entering.'
Legacy
Vanbrugh is remembered today for his vast contribution to British culture, theatre, and architecture. An immediate dramatic legacy was found among his papers after his sudden death, the three-act comedy fragment A Journey to London. Vanbrugh had told his old friend Colley Cibber that he intended in this play to question traditional marriage roles even more radically than in the plays of his youth, and end it with a marriage falling irreconcilably apart. The unfinished manuscript, today available in Vanbrugh's Collected Works, depicts a country family travelling to London and falling prey to its
sharperA sharper is an older term, common since the seventeenth-century, for thieves who use trickery to part an owner with his or her money possessions. Sharpers vary from what are now known as con-men by virtue of the simplicity of their cons, which often were impromptu, rather than carefully...
s and temptations, while a London wife drives her patient husband to despair with her
gamblingGambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
and her consorting with the demi-monde of
con menA confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...
and half-pay officers. As with The Relapse at the outset of Vanbrugh's dramatic career, Colley Cibber again became involved, and this time he had last word. Cibber, now a successful actor-manager, completed Vanbrugh's manuscript under the title of The Provoked Husband (1728) and gave it a happy and sententious ending in which the provocative wife repents and is reconciled: a
eulogyA eulogy is a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially one recently deceased or retired. Eulogies may be given as part of funeral services. However, some denominations either discourage or do not permit eulogies at services to maintain respect for traditions...
of marriage which was the opposite of Vanbrugh's declared intention to end his last and belated "Restoration comedy" with marital break-up. Cibber considered this projected outcome to be "too severe for Comedy", and such severity was in fact rarely to be seen on the English stage before
IbsenHenrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
.
On the 18th century stage, Vanbrugh's Relapse and Provoked Wife were only considered possible to perform in bowdlerised versions, but as such, they remained popular. Throughout Colley Cibber's long and successful acting career, audiences continued to demand to see him as Lord Foppington in The Relapse, while Sir John Brute in The Provoked Wife became, after being an iconic role for Thomas Betterton, one of
David GarrickDavid Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...
's most famous roles. In the present day, The Relapse, now again to be seen uncut, remains a favourite play.
With the completion of Castle Howard, English baroque came into fashion overnight. It had brought together the isolated and varied instances of monumental design, by, among others, Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren. Vanbrugh thought of masses, volume and perspective in a way that his predecessors had not.
He was adept at delivering buildings for his clients, that successfully met their requirements. His reputation has suffered because of his famed disagreements with the Duchess of Marlborough, yet, one must remember his original client was the British Nation, not the Duchess, and the nation wanted a monument and celebration of victory, and that is what Vanbrugh gave the nation.
His influence on successive architects is incalculable. Nicholas Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh's friend and collaborator on so many projects continued to design many London churches for ten years after Vanbrugh's death. Vanbrugh's pupil and cousin the architect
Edward Lovett PearceSir Edward Lovett Pearce was an Irish architect, and the chief exponent of palladianism in Ireland. He is thought to have initially studied as an architect under his father's first cousin, Sir John Vanbrugh. He is best known for the Irish Houses of Parliament in Dublin, and his work on Castletown...
rose to become one of
IrelandIreland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
's greatest architects. His influence in Yorkshire can also be seen in the work of the amateur architect William Wakefield who designed several buildings in the county that show Vanbrugh's influence.
Vanbrugh is commemorated throughout Britain, by inns, street names, a university college (
YorkVanbrugh College is a college of the University of York, UK, and was opened in 1968. The College is home to the History and History of Art departments, together with 166 undergraduates and 18 graduate students.-Description:...
) and schools named in his honour. However, his greatest attribute was his versatility and ability to combine his talents. His architectural works have been described as "the architectural equivalent of the heroic play, theatrical, grandiose, a dramatic grouping of restless masses with little reference to function."
Further reading
- Cordner, Michael. "Playwright versus priest: profanity and the wit of Restoration comedy". In Deborah Payne Fisk (ed.) (2000), The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Cropplestone, Trewin (1963). World Architecture. Hamlyn.
- Dal Lago, Adalbert (1966). Ville Antiche. Milan: Fratelli Fabbri.
- Harlin, Robert (1969). Historic Houses. London: Condé Nast.
- Vanbrugh, John (1927). The Complete Works, vols 1–5 (ed. Bonamy Dobrée and Geoffrey Webb). Bloomsbury: The Nonesuch Press.
- Whistler, Laurence (1938). Sir John Vanbrugh, Architect & Dramatist, 1664–1726. London.
External links
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