William Kent: Architect, Designer, Opportunist

Posted on January 20th, 2010 by Charles Boot

Timothy Mowl, William Kent: Architect, Designer, Opportunist (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006), 298 pp., £25.00 (hbk), ISBN 0224073508, or, from January 2007, ISBN 9780224073509

This entertaining book outlines the career of William Kent (1685–1748) from his early life in Bridlington, North Yorkshire, to his death in Burlington House in Piccadilly, London, taking in his Continental journeys and early successes in Rome, his work under the aegis of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork (1694–1753), his importance in the history of the second Palladian Revival, his aristocratic connections, his significance as a designer of gardens and fabriques, his architecture, his skill as a furniture designer and creator of lush interiors, his conviviality, his humour, his impact on the Gothick, and his all-important relationships with Queen Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1683–1737), Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745) and Henry Pelham (1694–1754), for whom he created many designs at Esher Place, Surrey.

Mowl correctly identifies New Principles Of Gardening … (London, 1728) by Batty Langley (1696–1751) as a powerful influence on garden design and on Kent: he also deplores the fact that Langley (not exactly a gentleman, with an unfortunate first name) has been the victim of what looks rather like ghastly English snobbery right from the word ‘go’. In addition, Langley ‘was an ardent and committed Freemason, and academics tend to curl their lips instinctively at any mention of that great and influential order as if it were equivalent to the Mafia’. This reviewer can confirm that this is, indeed, the case, for even when there are known portraits of architects wearing full Freemasonic regalia, no mention of the affiliation would ever be whispered by certain timid (even coy) writers. Langley was also far more important in the history of the Gothick Revival than people like Sanderson Miller (1716– 80) and Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717–97), would readily admit.

Kent’s career coincided with the early years of Hanoverian rule, at a time when Jacobite intrigue could still rock the national boat, as in 1715 and 1745–46, so there seem to have been those who kept feet in both camps just in case. Burlington himself, according to some views, may have seen Palladianism as linking a national architecture back to the reigns of James I and VI and Charles I, thus giving visual legitimacy to the Hanoverian Succession, while others have seen Burlington and his cronies as covert Jacobites. Whatever the truth, it is clear that architecture and garden design had powerful resonances that have been almost forgotten today, and that Kent was in the thick of it all.

This is all very odd, for Kent seems to have been almost illiterate (to judge from his surviving writings), was a rotten draughtsman, not a very good painter, and had shaky ideas about hydraulics (as his embarrassing ‘Cascade’ at Chiswick, Middlesex, demonstrates), yet was promoted by the aristocracy almost as though he were a latterday Raphael. Mowl, however, as provocative as ever, claims ‘William Kent was the greatest designer of the eighteenth century’: if he had rephrased this to suggest that Kent’s influence was immense, notably in the Gothick Revival, in the creation of the ‘natural’ so-called ‘English’ garden, and in designing sumptuous interiors recalling the Antique to mind, there would be no argument. Nevertheless, what Mowl does very effectively is to demolish the unwarranted atmosphere of hushed respect shown to ‘Georgian’ culture, for much of it was humdrum and really frightfully dull. He quite rightly points to the High Camp aspects of much of it, which has apparently offended many, but it is unquestionably true, so his book is a refreshing antidote to much oleaginously deferential writing on the period. What emerges is that the Hanoverians were often highly gifted and intelligent, that George I spoke English and several other languages, and that one of the key figures of the first half of the eighteenth century in architectural and landscape terms was Queen Caroline, no fool, educated by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (no less), and a great patron.

Mowl should, however, get himself a camera that does not distort buildings vertically: many of the colour plates are simply too amateurish and should not be in the book. He should also decide to use running commas or not, but not to mix them. Nevertheless, this is a cracking good read, and one can only hope the author will develop his themes on aspects of Georgian culture hitherto given scant attention by academics who ought to know better.

James Stevens Curl

33:2 (Winter 2005)

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