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James Wyatt.
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James Wyatt
born Aug. 3, 1746, Burton Constable, Staffordshire, Eng.
died Sept. 4, 1813, near Marlborough, Wiltshire
English architect chiefly remembered for his Romantic country houses, especially
the extraordinary Gothic Revival Fonthill Abbey.
In 1762 Wyatt went to Italy, where he remained six years. On his return to
England, he designed the London Pantheon (opened 1772; later demolished), a
Neoclassical building inspired by Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. The Pantheon made
Wyatt one of the most fashionable architects in England.
He succeeded Sir William Chambers as surveyor general to the Board of Works
(1796) and was engaged in restoring the cathedrals of Durham, Hereford,
Lichfield, and Salisbury, as well as Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, and
Magdalen College, Oxford. These “restorations” later earned him the epithet “the
Destroyer” from such medieval revivalists of the 19th century as A.W.N. Pugin,
who had a more accurate archaeological approach.
In point of originality, Wyatt's severely elegant works in the classical mode,
like Heaton Hall, Lancashire (1772), and Heveningham Hall, Suffolk (c. 1788–99),
were surpassed by the extravagance of his Gothic Revival buildings, of which the
most sensational was Fonthill Abbey (1796–1807), Wiltshire. Initially this was
built as a landscape feature and eventually developed into an extraordinary home
for the arch-Romantic William Beckford, who supervised its design and
construction. The great central tower (270 feet) collapsed in 1807, and after
Beckford sold the estate, in 1822, the house further fell into ruin. Today it
has mostly disappeared. In John Rutter's Delineations of Fonthill (1823),
however, one can still experience some of the building's grotesque, spectacular
quality that made it architecturally notorious in the Romantic period. Other
notable examples of Wyatt's Gothic country houses include Lee Priory, Kent
(1783–90), and Ashridge, Hertfordshire, completed (1808–18)by his nephew, Sir
Jeffry Wyatville. A biography of the nephew by Derek Linstrum was published in
1972.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Wyatt's "Pantheon" in
Oxford Street, London
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James Wyatt's design for the Oxford Street facade of the Pantheon in
Oxford Street, London circa 1769.
A painting of the Pantheon in Oxford Street, London, probably by
William Hodges with figures by Zoffany.
This shows the version which
existed before the fire of 1792.
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Broadway Tower, England. Designed by James Wyatt in the 1790s
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The Senior Common Rooms and Senior Library of Oriel College, Oxford.
Designed by James Wyatt in the 1780s.
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The Town Hall, Ripon, Yorkshire 1801
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St Swithun's Church, Church Lane, East Grinstead, District of Mid
Sussex, West Sussex, England.
The parish church of the town of East Grinstead, rebuilt in 1789.
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Frogmore House, Windsor Great Park
A delightful Royal residence in Windsor Great Park with Victoria &
Albert's Mausoleum in the grounds.
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Castle Coole, Enniskillen. Front of the building. County Fermanagh
1790-8
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Heaton Hall, Lancashire, 1772
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Fonthill Abbey. Built 1795 - 1807 by James Wyatt for William
Beckford,
the author of the gothic fantasy novel Vathek.
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Heinrich von Ferstel.
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Heinrich von Ferstel
(b Vienna, 7 July 1828; d Vienna, 14 July 1883).
Austrian architect. He was a member of the second generation of
historicist architects in Vienna, who continued and developed the
pioneering work of such architects as Karl Rösner, Eduard Van der
Nüll and August von Siccardsburg. These three, who represented the
Romantic period of early historicism in Austria, were Ferstel’s
teachers from 1848 to 1850 at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in
Vienna, and VAN DER NÜLL & SICCARDSBURG in particular were important
early influences. After leaving the academy, Ferstel joined the
architectural firm of his uncle Friedrich Stache (1814–95), whom he
assisted until 1853 in building castles and country houses for the
high nobility in Bohemia. Domestic architecture continued to play an
important part in his work. Before long, however, he was winning
major architectural competitions, such as the international
competition (1855) for the Votivkirche (1856–79) in Vienna.
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The
Votivkirche, Vienna, designed by Heinrich von Ferstel
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Friedrich von Schmidt.
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Friedrich von Schmidt
Friedrich von Schmidt (born Frickenhofen, Gschwend, Württemberg,
Austria, October 22, 1825; died Vienna, Austria, January 23, 1891)
was an architect who worked in late 19th century Vienna.
After studying at the technical
high school in Stuttgart under Breymann and Mauch, he became, in
1845, one of the guild workers employed in building Cologne
Cathedral, on which he worked for fifteen years. Most of the working
drawings for the towers were made by Schmidt and Vincenz Statz. In
1848 he attained the rank of master-workman and in 1856 passed the
state examination as architect. After becoming a Catholic in 1858,
he went to Milan as professor of architecture and began the
restoration of the cathedral of Sant'Ambrogio. On account of the
confusion caused by the war of 1859 he went to Vienna, where he was
a professor at the academy and cathedral architect from 1862; in
1865 he received the title of chief architect, and in 1888 was
ennobled by the emperor.
In the Gothic Revival style he
built in Vienna the Church of St. Lazarus, the church of the White
Tanners, and that of the Brigittines. He also built a school, the
Akademisches Gymnasium, with a Gothic facade and the memorial
building erected on the site of the amphitheatre that had been
destroyed by fire. The last mentioned building was in Venetian
Gothic. A large number of small ecclesiastical and secular buildings
in Austria and Germany were designed by him. His last work was the
restoration of the cathedral in Pécs in Hungary. His chief fame
however he gained by his restoration of St. Stephen's Cathedral,
Vienna. He took down the spire and worked on its rebuilding up to
1872.
He also designed the Town Hall or
Rathaus, Vienna, with a projecting middle section which has a
central tower that rises free to a height of 328 ft. and is flanked
by four smaller towers. A large court and six smaller ones are
enclosed by the extensive building, the wings of which end in
pavilions. In building the parish church in Funfhaus he even
ventured to set a facade with two towers in front of an octagonal
central structure with a high cupola and a corona of chapels. His
motto was to unite German force with Italian freedom. He modified
the tendency to height in the German Gothic by horizontal members
and introduced many modifications into the old standard of the style
in the hope of attaining a more agreeable general effect. He was
teacher and model to many younger architects, including Friedrich
Grünanger, Frigyes Schulek, Imre Steindl, and Karl Troll. A bronze
statue of him has been placed before the town-hall of Vienna. His
son Heinrich was overseer at the building of the cathedral of
Frankfurt and afterwards professor of medieval architecture in
Munich. He also designed Vaduz Cathedral and St. Joseph's Cathedral
in Bucharest. From 1870 to 1882, he worked as chief architect on the
neoromanesque Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Đakovo as
successor of Karl Rösner.
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Vienna Town Hall, designed by Friedrich von Schmidt
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Akademisches Gymnasium (1863-66) von Friedrich von Schmidt in Wien
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Eugene Viollet-le-Duc.
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Eugene Viollet-le-Duc
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
born Jan. 27, 1814, Paris, France
died Sept. 17, 1879, Lausanne, Switz.
French Gothic Revival architect, restorer of French medieval
buildings, and writer whose theories of rational architectural
design linked the revivalism of the Romantic period to 20th-century
Functionalism.
Viollet-le-Duc was a pupil of Achille Leclère but was inspired in
his career by the architect Henri Labrouste. In 1836 he traveled to
Italy, where he spent 16 months studying architecture. Back in
France he was drawn irrevocably to Gothic art. J.-B. Lassus first
trained Viollet-le-Duc as a medieval archaeologist on the
restoration of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois (1838). In 1839 his friend,
the writer Prosper Mérimée, placed him in charge of the restoration
of the abbey church of La Madeleine at Vézelay (1840), the first
edifice to be restored by a modern state commission. Mérimée, a
medievalist of note, was inspector of the recently formed Commission
on Historical Monuments, an organization in which Viollet-le-Duc
soon became a focal figure. In the early 1840s (through the 1860s)he
worked with Lassus on restoring the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, and in
1844 he and Lassus were appointed to restore Notre-Dame de Paris and
to build a new sacristy in the Gothicstyle; this commission was
regarded as an official sanction for the Gothic Revival movement in
France. Another important early restoration was the work done in
1846 on theabbey church of Saint-Denis. After 1848 he was associated
with the Service des Édifices Diocésains, supervising the
restoration of numerous medieval buildings, the most important being
the Amiens Cathedral (1849), the synodal hall at Sens (1849), the
fortifications of Carcassonne (1852), and the church of Saint-Sernin
at Toulouse (1862).
Viollet-le-Duc can be said to have dominated 19th-century theories
of architectural restoration; his initial aim was to restore in the
style of the original, but his later restorations show that he often
added entirely new elements of his own design. Twentieth-century
archaeologists and restorers haveseverely criticized these fanciful
reconstructions and added structures posing as restorations, for
they often destroy or render obscure the original form of the
edifice.
Of his original works, all his designs for ecclesiastical buildings
were in a weak Gothic style, notably the churches of Saint-Gimer and
Nouvelle Aude at Carcassonne and Saint-Denis-de-l'Estrée at
Saint-Denis. In his own work, however, he was not a confirmed
medieval revivalist, for all but one of his secular buildings are in
an uneasy Renaissance mode.
Viollet-le-Duc's numerous written works, all finely illustrated,
provide the foundation on which his distinction rests. He wrote two
great encyclopaedic works containing exact structural information
and extensive design analysis: Dictionnaire raisonné de
l'architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (1854–68; “Analytical
Dictionary of French Architecture from the XI th to the XVI th
Century”) and the Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de
l'époque carlovingienne à la Rénaissance (1858–75; “Analytical
Dictionary of French Furniture from the Carlovingians to the
Renaissance”). Running to 16 volumes, these two works provided the
vital visual and intellectual inspiration requiredto sustain the
Gothic Revival movement. He determined, however, to think his way
beyond the Romantic attractions of the Gothic style. Pursuing the
inquiries of 18th-century French architectural theorists, he
envisaged a rational architecture for the 19th century based on the
coherent system of construction and composition that he had observed
in Gothic architecture but that would in no way imitate its forms
and details. Architecture, he thought, should be a direct expression
of current materials, technology, and functional needs. Ironically,
he was unable to accept the challenge of his own ideas, for both he
and his French disciples continued to design buildings in eclectic
styles.
Viollet-le-Duc's general theory of architecture, which affected the
development of modern organic and functional concepts of design, was
set forth in his book Entretiens sur l'architecture (1858–72).
Translated into English as Discourses on Architecture (1875), this
work, containing information on the construction of iron skeletons
enclosed by nonbearing masonry walls, especially influenced the
late-19th-century architects of the Chicago school, particularly
John W. Root. Other important writings by Viollet-le-Duc include
L'Art russe (1877; “Russian Art”) and De la décoration appliquée aux
édifices (1879; “On Decoration Applied to Buildings”).
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Ideal Gothic Church
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One of a great quantity of Gothic studies by
French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc at Wikimedia Commons.
Also in the Commons is a large selection of photographs and drawings
of the fortified city of Carcassonne which the architect
controversially restored.
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Viollet-le-Duc
Château-de-Pierrefonds |
Viollet-le-Duc
La Porte St Nazaire
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