JAMES GIBBS, ARCHITECT

James Gibbs (1682-1754) was a highly influential architect of Hanoverian Britain, whose buildings beautify and adorn the nation. He had the good fortune to be born into the merchant class of my home town, Aberdeen, in Scotland. He attended Aberdeen Grammar School, preceding Lord Byron (and me!) and studied at Marischal College, then one of Aberdeen’s two universities, at a time when Scotland had five and all England could only boast of two.

 

James Gibbs

                                                           

In an era of religious discrimination Gibbs was born into a Catholic family and all his life he practised his religion privately and discreetly. On the death of his parents, he lived with an aunt in Holland, travelled in France, Flanders and Germany before going to gloriously Baroque Rome to study architecture. Returning inspired to London in 1709, he enjoyed the early patronage of the Scots Earl of Mar and that of prominent Tories on domestic commissions. He soon progressed, meeting Wren and Hawksmoor before winning his first church project, a new Church on the Strand later known as St Mary-le-Strand. It was to be a signal triumph for Gibbs.

 Gibbs was never quite fashionable all his life and this can partly be ascribed to his Catholicism – the first Jacobite rebellion of 1715 compromised his friend the Earl of Mar, as it sought the replacement of the Hanoverian dynasty with the descendants of Catholic James II and the Stuarts. Gibbs’ Tory patrons were a diminishing band too, as from 1721 the Whigs under Walpole entered into their long 40-year ascendancy in British politics. The two factions had their own artistic cliques. In architecture the Whigs could admire Lord Burlington (the apostle of Palladianism and creator of Chiswick House) and another Scotsman, Colen Campbell (architect of Walpole’s Houghton Hall and a sharp rival of Gibbs). Gibbs’ classic Wren-like style was favoured by Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford and the Tory maverick Lord Bolingbroke.

St Mary-le-Strand, completed in 1717, is on an island site in the middle of the Strand, then as now a very busy street. Gibbs designed it as an Italianate church with a modest tower but was forced to erect a much more prominent tower to replace a campanile whereupon a statue of Queen Anne was to perch; this part of the project was cancelled and Gibbs had to use the expensively bought stone elsewhere! His large steeple is very imposing, if somewhat unbalancing. The church itself carries all the baroque influences, especially in the East end, of Rome and Flanders and is internally lavishly decorated in the Italian style. Nowadays it gracefully complements the grandeur of Somerset House by Sir William Chambers, the arc of The Aldwych and brings distinction to the modern purlieus of Kings College, London.

                   

St Mary-le-Strand

                   

St Mary-le-Strand interior

Gibbs throughout the 1720s and 1730s worked as a very busy architect. He had many aristocratic commissions such as the Octagon for Orleans House, the design of Ditchley Park and of Antony House in Cornwall and the remodelling of Wimpole for his patron the Earl of Oxford. He also produced some delightful ornamental follies for the park at Stowe. He worked on the Senate House for Cambridge University and also there on the Fellows’ Building at King’s College.

In 1721, Gibbs won the competition for the rebuilding of the decrepit St Martin’s in the Fields in what is now Trafalgar Square. His striking design, known to all visitors to London (although many lazily assume it is by Wren) dominates the area. A Corinthian colonnaded temple to the front and sides is topped by a large steeple placed exactly behind the pediment. This was not how Gothic or Wren steeples were usually built; they were separate structures, not integrated within the church walls. There were critical objections but Gibbs’ design caught on and St Martin’s is the blueprint for Anglican churches the world over, notably in the USA. It is ironic that a closet-Catholic should have created so recognisably Protestant a style.

St Martin's in the Fields

                                       

One further Gibbs masterpiece remains, The Radcliffe Camera at Oxford. This was first sketched as a circular domed building by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1715, but was never executed. Gibbs worked on an entirely new design and the Camera, a university library, was built between 1736 and 1749. It is part of a splendid ensemble of buildings, including All Souls, Brasenose College and the University Church within a cobbled square.

The Radcliffe Camera, Oxford

                                              

The classical exterior evokes the profile of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice while the interior is a place of scholarship and convenient beauty. The Camera is a great cosmopolitan building adding lustre to the University and confirming the high reputation of James Gibbs.

Gibbs never married but he was sociable knowing naturally enough the great architects of his time, Wren, Hawksmoor, Archer and Vanbrugh. He was painted by Hogarth and knew the matchless poet Alexander Pope. Gibbs was generous, waiving his fee for extensive work renovating St Bartholomew’s Hospital. In a gesture of filial gratitude he worked without charge in remodelling the Nave of the large Kirk of St Nicholas in his native Aberdeen. He died in London in 1754 and was buried at St Marylebone Parish Church.  He left the bulk of his estate to Lord Erskine, the son of his first patron the Earl of Mar, whose kindness was not forgotten and whose own lands had been forfeit after the Jacobite rebellions. He also made bequests to Barts Hospital, (of which he was a governor) and the Foundlings Hospital.

Kirk of St Nicholas, Aberdeen, recipient of Gibbs' benificence

                                     

Gibbs’ buildings are conservative, classic and reassuring. He may not be strikingly original and his work demonstrates an abundance of talent rather than genius. We are comfortable in his company which explains his enduring popularity.

SMD

17.05.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013