What Meanings Did Contemporaries Attach To Styles — страница 3

  • Просмотров 232
  • Скачиваний 5
  • Размер файла 18
    Кб

place? and were often viewed as inappropriate for the English world.? Despite the support of the Dillettanti for the school, and the obvious confirmation of the good taste of the style, James Cawthorn wrote that it was not only ridiculous to build Mediterranean buildings in Britain, but in certain cases sacrilegious.? The copying of Greek or Roman temples, circuses or ?Cyprian shrines? for use as churches he sees as blasphemous and dangerous. Cawthorn goes on to attack the trend for Chinese architecture, noting how the ?farms and seats? of England were trying to match the ?villas of Pekin?. Chamber?s ?Design of Chinese Buildings? along with prints produced by Jesuit missionaries and wandering artists proliferated the cult of Chinese architecture as the pavilion of Hyde Park will

testify.? The fad for the east was most evident in gardening where landscape artists such as Brown or Repton would, in Hogarth?s words, install ?a serpentine river and a wood? as desired, based upon the popularly circulated images of Chinese gardens.? Mrs. Delany speaks at length of how a traditional English estate was transformed by landscaping so that they had ?opened a view to the river? and turning the deer out.? Although Mrs. Delany sees the deer as ?beautiful enliveners? of a view, she seems to approve in general of the changes to the house which although ?not entirely finished according to the plan, is very handsome and convenient.?? It is notable that in ?Humphry Clinker,? Mrs Baynard?s crippling attempts at landscaping included the (disastrous) installation of a stream.?

The mode for Chinese architecture was popular enough for Lord Kames to bitterly declare it the preferred mode of building before ?the Gothic? or the ?Greek? schools. Attacking the Chinese style, Shebbeare?s ?Letters on the English Nation? criticises the proliferation of the school that encouraged ?little bits of wood standing in all directions.?? Morris? ?The Architectural Remembrancer? claims that the Chinese school ??consists in mere whim and chimera, without rules or order?? and regards the whole school as a ?novelty,? much like the eighteenth century Gothic school. The eighteenth century Gothic resurgence, led by Horace Walpole?s Strawberry Hill villa near Twickenham.? Taking the opportunity to ?exhibit specimens of Gothic architecture,? the resurgence of the Gothic style

quickly overtook the Palladian school.? Shebbeare?s ?Letters on the English Nation? demonstrate some hostility to the Gothic school although this likely to be more of an aesthetic hostility as opposed to anything deeper, as he reflects on the ?minute unmeaning carvings which are found in the Gothic chapels of a thousand years standing? and the hundreds of houses with ?porches in that taste.? The ?novelty? styles (Gothic/Chinese) physically contrast well with the Palladian buildings of the eighteenth century, yet all were ?tasteful? and approved of.? Although the novelty fads belong more to Regency England and people of the echelon of the Macaroni, the age of the great town house brought out these absurdly different styles.? The Palladian school, although the height of traditional

good taste, was criticised for its ignorance of life in Britain.? Open atria and mosaic flooring in halls are never advisable in wet climates, and it was for such inadequacies of the school that it was condemned.