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World of Art
Hawksmoor
After two decades, this remains the standard work on Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736), a student and collaborator of Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh and one of Britain's outstanding baroque architects. The book covers all of Hawksmoor's surviving buildings—six London churches, All Souls and the Clarendon Building in Oxford, the towers of Westminster Abbey, parts of Castle Howard (including his strange, melancholic, blind Mausoleum) and Blenheim, Greenwich Hospital, and the strikingly beautiful house at Easton Neston. The large number of extant drawings and documents illuminate not only the evolution of many of these works but also Hawksmoor's artistic aims and personality, as well as his relation to Wren, Vanbrugh, and his rivals the Palladians.
First published in the late 1950s, this was the first major study of Hawksmoor, untangling his work from that of his masters and rescuing him from the shadows of the 18th-century classicists and the Victorians who despised his work and considered his baroque style immoral. In this new edition, many details have been revised in light of recent research, and the list of buildings and drawings has been brought up to date. There are eight appendixes containing Hawksmoor's letters, discussions and explanations of plans and buildings, an extensive list of his buildings and drawings, a bibliographic note and index.
First published in the late 1950s, this was the first major study of Hawksmoor, untangling his work from that of his masters and rescuing him from the shadows of the 18th-century classicists and the Victorians who despised his work and considered his baroque style immoral. In this new edition, many details have been revised in light of recent research, and the list of buildings and drawings has been brought up to date. There are eight appendixes containing Hawksmoor's letters, discussions and explanations of plans and buildings, an extensive list of his buildings and drawings, a bibliographic note and index.
- GenresArchitecture
298 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
31 people want to read
About the author
Kerry Downes
25 books4 followersAn English architectural historian specialising in English Baroque architecture, Kerry John Downes was Professor of History of Art at University of Reading from 1978 until 1991.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 2, 2022
I enjoyed this oh-so-dry and academic portrayal of one of the greats of the English baroque. Making connections to the Italian baroque, and specifically to Borromini, which is helping in my understanding of the style, each architect, and even Venturi, who draws on both in Complexity and Contradiction. Also, hadn't really known much about the "Fifty New Churches" that were to be built in 18th century London post-fire, and it's wonderful to see the plans and design options, so rare in contemporary architectural journalism and even in historical narratives. I love seeing how the designs accommodated/inflected toward/took advantage of particular streets, views and spaces in the City of London, yet maintained a strong character and design idea in each case. Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace too are both works with multiple architects, including Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, but Hawksmoor is common to both, and seems to have done some of his best work there, especially the Mausoleum at Castle Howard, which I'm dying to see.
The one-word chapter headings (Learning, Practice, Apostolate, Exploration, Achievement, Reform and Wisdom) are almost sacramental epithets, but accurate in their description of the corresponding career activities. In Apostolate especially, there is a section describing the collaboration between Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor on Blenheim palace, with a series of photos of the roofscape (what Hawksmoor called "the Eminency's", wonderfully complex and lyrical sculptures that adorned/enlivened/embellished/crowned the top of the palace) that look like a wonderful playground of the architect's imagination. This celestial playfulness appears again in the steeples of the new churches, ranging from towers to pyramids, truncated, stretched and sculpted to provide the wonderful vertical markers that still define the London cityscape.
My most recent encounter with Hawksmoor was in 2019, Christ Church Spitalfields, where I finally had a chance to look carefully at the steeple, and specifically its base, on which Venturi had described a wonderful tension between its two and three dimensional aspects. In this case, steeple was stretching toward a more billboard type of expression, though maybe a more apt analogy would be to the sign-like qualities of the gothic cathedral facades, with their sign-like, didactic carvings expressly engaging with the profane/public realm. Hawksmoor's steeple, less didactic, was more about establishing a place in the city, and its nod to the street, its up front facade-ism, even in this minor detail, was thrilling to see.
Interesting too that there is very little on Hawksmoor's private/family life, refreshing in our prurient/lifestyles of the rich and famous age. The final chapter contains an apt closing describing his excellence in "the eloquence of stone", and his gravestone containing the latin inscription "PMSL" or Piae Memoriae Sacer Locus, a sacred place of pious memory.
The one-word chapter headings (Learning, Practice, Apostolate, Exploration, Achievement, Reform and Wisdom) are almost sacramental epithets, but accurate in their description of the corresponding career activities. In Apostolate especially, there is a section describing the collaboration between Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor on Blenheim palace, with a series of photos of the roofscape (what Hawksmoor called "the Eminency's", wonderfully complex and lyrical sculptures that adorned/enlivened/embellished/crowned the top of the palace) that look like a wonderful playground of the architect's imagination. This celestial playfulness appears again in the steeples of the new churches, ranging from towers to pyramids, truncated, stretched and sculpted to provide the wonderful vertical markers that still define the London cityscape.
My most recent encounter with Hawksmoor was in 2019, Christ Church Spitalfields, where I finally had a chance to look carefully at the steeple, and specifically its base, on which Venturi had described a wonderful tension between its two and three dimensional aspects. In this case, steeple was stretching toward a more billboard type of expression, though maybe a more apt analogy would be to the sign-like qualities of the gothic cathedral facades, with their sign-like, didactic carvings expressly engaging with the profane/public realm. Hawksmoor's steeple, less didactic, was more about establishing a place in the city, and its nod to the street, its up front facade-ism, even in this minor detail, was thrilling to see.
Interesting too that there is very little on Hawksmoor's private/family life, refreshing in our prurient/lifestyles of the rich and famous age. The final chapter contains an apt closing describing his excellence in "the eloquence of stone", and his gravestone containing the latin inscription "PMSL" or Piae Memoriae Sacer Locus, a sacred place of pious memory.
April 19, 2013
Excellent - a lot, inevitably, of things I wasn't entirely conversant with, such as the many schemes for Oxbridge colleges, the unwitting debt to Michelangelo, the contributions to Castle Howard and Blenheim, experiments with Venetian windows ....
October 11, 2015
I wish there was more on the churches, but a really great book, with some amazing images too!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews