CHISWICK HOUSE and SIR JOHN SOANE'S MUSEUM: London's Finest (3)

[This is the third in a series of articles to describe some of the most interesting and attractive places in London.]

Chiswick House, built by Lord Burlington in 1729 with its landscape Gardens, laid out by William Kent, has been described as “the most elegant public amenity in London”. It is a lovely Palladian villa, much to the taste of 18^th century aristocrats and connoisseurs.

Chiswick House

Chiswick is by the Thames in West London some 6 miles from the centre. The site of Chiswick House was first adorned by a Jacobean mansion owned by the Boyle family but it was destroyed in a fire in 1726. Richard Boyle, 3^rd Earl of Burlington (1694-1753), was a gifted amateur architect and an enthusiast for Greek and Roman buildings as interpreted by the Venetian master Andrea Palladio (1508-80). He resolved to build a villa in the Palladian style and Chiswick House is the fine result, setting the criterion of taste for a generation of English country houses.

Chiswick House is in an eclectic mixture of styles, evoking the Roman Temple to Castor and Pollux, Palladio’s Villa Rotonda near Vicenza, Diocletian’s Palace at Split and the adornments illustrated in numerous architectural drawings circulated in Burlington’s artistic circle. The 65-acre Gardens were similarly influenced by, but did not slavishly copy the great Roman gardens like Tivoli. The distinguished interior designer William Kent played a leading part in the design of the gardens, whose informality ushered in the long age of the English landscaped garden, as opposed to the symmetry and classic design of the French formal garden.

The precise purpose of Chiswick House is obscure – “too small to be a house and too large within merely to wind one’s watch” observed a contemporary. Burlington hung paintings from his collection on the elegant baroque walls, but really it was meant to be a meeting place for the literate intelligentsia, where they could conduct conversazioni in the sociable 18^th century fashion. In Burlington’s time certainly many eminent people visited the House like Pope and Walpole. After Burlington died in 1753, quickly followed by his widow and only daughter, the House passed to the Duke of Devonshire’s family, prominent Whigs.

The interior of Chiswick House in its prime

The house really blossomed under the Devonshires, becoming a Whig salon, more living quarters were rather clumsily added and for some years under the dynamic leadership of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, famous visitors came, including Voltaire, Rousseau, eminent Americans John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson; two famous politicians died at Chiswick, brilliant Whig leader Charles James Fox in 1806 and Liberal Tory Prime Minister George Canning in 1827.

Georgiana Devonshire

Charles James Fox

                   

Sadly the House was neglected in the 19^th century and was sold to the local council in 1929. A German flying bomb put paid to the living quarters in 1944 and caused much damage but the House was manfully restored by English Heritage and Chiswick House with its lovely Gardens are now deliciously at the disposal of the people of London.

---------------------------------------

Sir John Soane (1753- 1838) was one of the most eminent neo-classical architects of his generation. Of modest birth, he was taken under the wing of the successful architect George Dance the Younger, went on the Grand Tour to Italy and Sicily and sought the advice of the fine designer Sir William Chambers. Winning many commissions, he is most famous for his rebuilding of The Bank of England from 1790 onwards and for his ingenious top-light design of the Dulwich Picture Gallery. He became Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy.

Sir John Soane

Yet Soane was an unlucky architect. His Bank of England was ruined by Sir Herbert Baker’s clumsy 1920s extensions - “the greatest architectural crime in the City of the 20^th century” fulminated Pevsner - and his cool spacious style quickly went out-of-date as Gothic Revivalism and other schools became more favoured. From the early 1800s he collected classical objects, architectural drawings and paintings and his fame now rests on the houses he built at 12,13 (and recently recovered 14) Lincolns Inn Fields, Holborn, which he bequeathed with his collection to the nation on his death. Sir John Soane’s Museum (or simply The Soane) is a decidedly idiosyncratic institution.

The frontage of the Soane

The Museum is very crowded with a bewildering array of objects – you can easily trip up over a Grecian urn or a bust of the Emperor Augustus. Only a maximum of 80 visitors are admitted at any one time, so queuing is sometimes necessary. There are agreeable domestic rooms of the Regency period, classical and medieval fragments everywhere, an eccentric and gloomy suite of monk’s quarters, many drawings and sketches by Soane himself and by his friends, like Flaxman and Chantry, architectural fancies by Piranesi, and one of the Museums great treasures, from excavations in Thebes in Egypt, the Sarcophagus of Seti I, some 3,000 years old and covered in hieroglyphics. Soane bought it when the trustees of the British Museum declined to purchase in 1824 and he mounted a 3-day reception to celebrate its acquisition.

The busy ambiance of The Soane

To my mind the most striking feature of The Soane is its paintings, as much for their curious arrangement as for their innate quality. Soane devised an ingenious Picture-Room where three of the walls contain hinged panels which open inwards to display further pictures. Displayed in this way are the famous 8 pictures by William Hogarth known as The Rake’s Progress from 1733 depicting a disastrously misspent youth and the 4 picture series The Election from 1754 satirising the corrupt election practices of the time, acquired from the estate of David Garrick. The other paintings are by no means negligible, including Canalettos, Turners and Lawrences.

An Election Entertainment by William Hogarth

In my brief sketch I hope I have conveyed some of the individuality of The Soane. When I first visited in the 1970s, it was really very cramped but the re-acquisition of no 14 has provided more space both for the visitor and for the student. Try and join a conducted tour focussing on just a few of the multitude of objects on view. A visit is certain to be rewarding.

SMD
17.02.14
Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2014