ABSTRACT
Great architects were not necessarily great draughtsmen. For example, while Inigo Jones was considered to be one of the finest draughtsmen in Europe, there is much more debate about the quality of Christopher Wren’s drawings (Lever and Richardson 1983, Summerson 1966). The situation becomes even less clear where architects of renown established substantial offices in which other architects and pupils were employed. In such circumstances it is often difficult to tell who was actually responsible for the drawings and in some cases the designs as well. In England, standards of drafting were to improve following the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. When at the end of the 18th century, picturesque architecture came into fashion in the work of architects like John Nash (1752-1835) it became almost obligatory to compose designs as pictures. As well as line and wash, presentations were required in watercolour paintings. As a result, professional watercolour artists were increasingly engaged by architects to illustrate their designs in flamboyant style. Many of the illustrators were architects themselves, and it is interesting to speculate on how much they were
responsible for developing the designs as they drew them. By the early years of the 19th century, it had become almost impossible in many cases to distinguish between a topographical view and an architectural design. This depiction of Whitley Court is a topographical view by Wood, although it could almost equally well be one of Repton’s c. 1810 design drawings for Nash. From the turn of the century, perspectivists were much in demand especially in the larger architectural offices. The Royal Academy
2.1Witley Court, Great Witley, Worcestershire
J Wood 1843
Exhibition had become an important venue for attracting commissions and perspective artists produced many of the exhibits which seemed to increase in size as the 19th century progressed (Lever and Richardson 1983). According to Blomfield (1912), there are clear differences in architectural drawings related to their purpose. The intention for creating them may be either objective or subjective, i.e. generated to produce a building exactly as drawn or to allow an impression of the building to be formed in someone else’s mind. Farey and Edwards (1931) point out that as owners are spending considerable sums on these projects, they should be able to demand a realistic impression of the building as well as the kind of factual information for construction. It sounds so simple-the architect just needs to offer a realistic impression of the building but this statement is at the heart of the discussion. Even Goodhart-Rendel’s (1951) proclamation that the perspective drawing is the dishonest architect’s most artful and convenient confederate does not really explain the various forces at work. As Gavin Stamp (1982) says, it is actually to do with skill as well as honesty and the notion of artistic licence undermines some of the assurance about a correlation between the eventual building and its representation. Spiers (1887) notes that a perspective can never convey the ultimate effect of the building because it is limited to one fixed point of view. Presumably, therefore, he was advocating models as the only means of securing unlimited views of the proposals. Adams (1901) adds more doubt about the effectiveness of pictorial representation in his conclusion that the more we realize that perspectives are at best architectural diagrams, the better for good building. Perspective drawing was not used in early art forms. It does
not occur in ancient Egyptian or Greek art. The geometric theory and practical system for these drawings were actually developed during the Renaissance (Diekman and Pile 1983).
