The architecture of The French Enlightenment [mid-18th century until the French Revolution] you can but admire in Britain - William Kent, Vanburgh, Hawksmoor, Robert Adam [right: portrait by George Willison c.1773], Tradition of the Grand Tour, etc.
Zoffany's painting of Charles Towneley and colleagues, of c.1781, recently-imported classical statuary at his home of 14 Queen Anne's Gate, London. Note the splendid carpet. |
The Barrieres of Paris, elevations of ten now destroyed customs posts |
In the 19th century, my favourite is Schinkel [1781-1841], a charming looking man.
Above: Schinkel's set design for Mozart's 'The Magic Flute' [1816] |
Extract from Karl Friedrich Schinkel 'The English Journey' Journal of a Visit to France and Britain in 1826:
Friday, 16 June
Looked at interiors of colleges and churches. First a beautiful garden outside one of these buildings, and old church, part of which is Anglo-Saxon, Christ Church. Picture gallery in Radcliffe's foundation, bad, incomprehensible how such things can be exhibited. - Chapel and cloister in the college at the entrance to the town [Magdalen]. Good stained glass from Rubens's time, new glass opposite, vestibule of the church with an iron stove in the middle, where the smoke is drawn away under the floor. - Another courtyard and church at the entrance to the park, vestibule, 4 pinnacles on the tower. - Church in the main street. the wooden roof construction without beams and with flat pointed arches, as small iron roofs are now made. - Library [Radcliffe Camera], circular building with arches all round; 2 fine candelabra, especially the one with the 3 Ibis figures. Once can see clearly how the circular shape is retained in a triangle. View from the gallery of the Library into the various colleges quite distinctive and opulent but very repetitive architecture. - Collection of natural history specimens and antiquities in another ponderous building (next to it execrable herms), Druid rings in glass mosaic, perhaps Phonoecian. Models of Stonehenge near Salisbury. - The church of another college with stained glass windows by the old Dutch school and that of West.
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