decoration in buildings || architectural sculpture in london 1890-1940

The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present

Architectural Sculpture in London 1890-1940Author(s): Peyton SkipwithSource: The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 - the Present, No. 21, decoration inbuildings (1997), pp. 121-129Published by: The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the PresentStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41809261 .

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Architectural Sculpture

in London 1890-1940

by Peyton Skipwith

"W e may admit as an abstract proposition, that our work will gain in value and force when it is associated with sculpture. But how is this to be done? In this grinding, mercenary age, when clients expect so much for their money, such an extravagance as sculpture seems out of the question - a luxury which the mere utilitarian aspect of a building will not allow ... one remedy, 1 believe, is to associate the sculptor with ourselves in the early work; he should not be left to manipulate sundry blocks reserved for carving towards the completion of the building." (John Belcher RIBA Transactions 1892, vol 8, pp.49-50)

The alliance between sculpture and architecture received a fresh boost of confidence, vitality and optimism in the early 1890s with the unveiling of John Belcher's Institute of Chartered Accountants building in Moorgate, in the City of London. The building is an early example of what has come to be known as Edwardian Baroque, though The Times (24 April 1893) described it as being in a style that could be described as "Classical, or Palladian, or late Renaissance, or by whatever name best describes the architecture of which Wren was the first and almost the only exponent in England." It fills an awkward corner site in Moorgate Place and Great Swan Alley; the main block achieving its sense of grandeur through Belcher's bold use of massive doric columns supporting a pronounced entablature, which contain between their shafts, and immediately below the sills of the second-

Fig. 1 John Belcher, Elevation for the Institute of Chartered Accountants (The Institute of Chartered Accountants. Photograph The Fine Art Society, London).

Fig.2 The Institute of Chartered Accountants, Moorgate, showing the sculptured frieze by Hamo Thornycroft and console sculpture and winged terms by Harry Bates.

storey windows, twelve panels carved with standing figures in high relief. These panels by Hamo Thornycroft - assisted by John Tweed - form a continuous frieze, and, combined with Harry Bates's winged terms and console are among the highlights of the New Sculpture movement. Taken together with T E Collcutt's building for Lloyd's Register of Shipping a decade later with its relief panels by George Frampton and Frank Lynn- Jenkins, they represent the collaboration between architect

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and sculptor in its fullest and most satisfactory form.

The use of a carved relief frieze contained between columns is an architectural device as old as classical architecture itself, but what Thornycroft achieved, whilst retaining the classical format, was to break away from the by-then hackneyed and stylised robed figures of neo- classicism and bring the language of sculpture up to date. He had already made a name with his life- size figure'The Mower'; shown at the Royal Academy in 1884. 'The Mower', with its debt to Donatello's 'David', and overtones of Meunier's heroic workers, depicts a young agricultural labourer with wide-brimmed hat, naked torso, left hand casually on hip whilst his scythe nestles comfortably into his crooked right arm, taking a momentary rest, not from exhaustion but from pride and satisfaction in a good job well done. The idea for the Moorgate frieze was that it should depict "all the varied interests which look to Chartered Accountants for financial guidance and order". Apart from the first three panels representing Arts, Sciences and Crafts, which are depicted in classical dress, all the figures in the other panels, with the exception in each case of the central title figure holding an inscribed tablet, are in contemporary dress, and depict such themes as 'Education', 'Commerce', 'Agriculture', Shipping' and 'Railways'. A longer frieze, 'Building', extends much of the length of the Great Swan Alley facade,

Fig. 3. Detail of George Frampton's marble frieze in the entrance to Electra House, Moorgate (now the City University).

and here, in the best mediaeval tradition, Thornycroft exercised the artist's prerogative and incorporated portraits of many of those from architect to masons who had been involved in the project. Just round the corner is another building by Belcher, the former Electra House of 1900-03, now London Guildhall University, with spandrels and other relief panels by Frampton.

Susan Beattie in her pioneering New Sculpture traces the renaissance of the carved relief back a couple of decades prior to Belcher's great building, and attributes it to the need for floral and other decorative panels in the Queen Anne revival of the 1870s. Certainly, plant forms played an important part in this revival and Frampton's collaboration with C Harrison Townsend on the Bishopsgate Instititute (1892-94) predates his collaboration with such architects as Collcutt, Simpson and Belcher on more overtly figurative sculpture. However, for the purposes of this article we are more immediately concerned with the progeny of the Institute of Chartered Accountants than its antecedents and here, before the turn of the century, we can cite not only Lloyd's Registry, mentioned above, but the collaboration between Francis Doyle and Charles Allen on the Royal insurance Offices, Liverpool; Leonard Stokes and Henry Wilson at All Saints Convent, St Albans; J S Gibson and H C Fehr on the Middlesex Guildliall and J W Simpson and George Frampton at Kelvingrove, Glasgow. However, we must not only look at those buildings actually erected close in date to Belcher's building, but to the projects proposed by the younger generation of architects, and here names such as Gerald Horsley, C H B Quennell, Honeyman & Keppie, Smith & Brewer and, most significantly, Charles Holden, begin to emerge.

Charles Holden's 1896 entry for the Soane Medallion was for a market hall; in this he appears to revert to the early mediaeval concept and produced a design for a quasi-ecclesiastical building with square tower, arcades and a strong, wrap-round sculptural frieze divided into panels by buttresses rising the height of the building. Amongst Holden's early buildings are Bristol Central Reference Library and the Law Society extension in Chancery Lane, London, on both of which he employed the little known sculptor, Charles Pibworth. However the aesthetic debt was clear and Pevsner says "The work of 1904 Law Society, Chancery Lane is remarkable, influenced perhaps by Beresford Pite and Belcher, but of an elegance and independence all its own. "These two buildings, and his collaboration with Pibworth, set the scene for one of his first great buildings, the headquarters of the British Medical Association on the corner of the Strand and Agar Street, and for his long collaboration with Jacob Epstein.

The commission for the rebuilding of Cockerell's original BMA headquarters was nominally given to Percy Adams in 1906, but the work was largely carried out by his assistant, Charles Holden, who became a partner in the firm the following year. The decision to commission a

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Fig.4 The B.M.A. Building, (now Zimbabwe House) Agar Street, Strand, c.1928, prior to the mutilation of Epstein's standing figures (Photograph The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds).

virtually unknown and untested American-Jewish sculptor, still in his mid-twenties, to carve eighteen over life-size naked figures for the facade was a bold - not to say almost foolhardy - one, and the public outcry began in 1908 as soon as the scaffolding was removed. Although most of the stone carving was carried out by skilled professionals, Epstein's zeal and grasp of the architectural implications of the figures and the production of the eighteen seven-foot plasters in a matter of eighteen months was phenomenal and fully justified Holden's faith in him. The figures, which symbolize medicine and allied sciences, are in Portland stone and are rigorously contained within the recesses created by the grey Cornish granite pilasters that divide the windows on the second floor, thus, once again, creating the effect of a continuous frieze. The upper two storeys, like the sculpture, are in Portland stone. Nearly half a century later, opening the Epstein exhibition at Bolton, Holden recalled his original plan: "I conceived the idea that the series of white figures on each side of the windows, set in a framework of dark granite, would serve to weave the two materials together like white stitching joining a dark to a light material." The history of the figures is a sad one: much abused, as was Epstein himself. Despite having survived threatened removal in 1935, when the Southern Rhodesian Government purchased the building - thus precipitating Sickert's resignation from the Royal Academy - the sculptures were wilfully mutilated after a piece of stone was dislodged by coronation decorations

Fig. 5 Zimbabwe House today

in 1937. However, even in their present vestigial state, scarred and weather-worn like figures from a great Gothic portal, they have an extraordinary dignity and presence.

Epstein was to collaborate with Holden again in the '20s on the W H Hudson Memorial and 55 Broadway, the headquarters of London Transport; one of the best buildings of its period in London. Both the brief for this building and the site were demanding. The building had to incorporate St James's Park underground station as well contain a very high concentration of offices, a problem which Holden ingeniously solved by keeping part of the building down to a single storey, whilst providing a central tower with four projecting spurs, which produced the necessary office space. Epstein carved two great figure groups 'Day' and 'Night' over the entrances to the station, whilst Holden seized the opportunity provided by the four spurs to commission six further artists - Eric Gill, Henry Moore, A H Gerrard, Eric Aumônier, F Rabinovitch (later known as Rabin) and Alan Wyon - to produce eight relief plaques depicting the four winds. Although difficult, to see in detail - and with such major works as Moore's first commission and the three Gills one would like to be able to study them more closely - they add a vital note to the total ensemble and lead one's eye upwards. Sadly, Holden was forbidden to use Epstein on the Senate Building of London University, an impressive pile that cries out for some great sculpture. However, Epstein was the artist that a philistine press and public loved to

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hate, especially after the First World War: he had a German-sounding name, was Jewish, lived an ostentatiously bohemian life and offended their sensibilities through his uncompromisingly direct depiction, and at times distortion, of the more intimate parts of the female body. Nowhere was this more true than in the Hudson Memorial, 'Rima', in Hyde Park. No piece of public sculpture in London has been so abused, both physically and verbally; it and Epstein became objects of public obloquy and targets for Mosleyite anti-semitic attacks in the years immediately following its unveiling in May 1925. Now, happily, the secluded bird sanctuary over which it presides, dedicated to this great naturalist, is visited more frequently by the wild life of Hyde Park than by hooligans intent on tarring and feathering one of London's most original public sculptures.

The relationship and rapport between architect and sculptor is very important for, as C R Ashbeesaid: "When we are undecided as to the

fitting marriage between sculptureand architecture it is well to ponder over the lovely mouldings of the Lorenzo tomb of Michelangelo, or the Wellington tomb of Alfred Stevens. Whether the sculptor or the architect takes the lead matters little, as long as the relationship is right; and that, like every marriage, is a matter of feeling - and from heaven."

Fig.6 Epstein at the unveiling of 'Rima' in Hyde Park, 1925 (Photograph Henry Moore Institute, Leeds)

The Art Workers Guild was founded to foster just such relationships, as well as to provide a forum for the interchange of ideas and the fusion of the arts. Belcher and Thornycroft were members, Holden was a member, as was Gilbert Bayes who got all his architectural commissions through direct contact and friendship with various architects. One of the closest of his collaborations was with T P Bennett, whose Saville Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue of the early 1930s is wrapped round by Bayes's tour de force in cast stone 'Drama through the Ages' - now visually desecrated by MGM's great triangular neon sign plonked insensitively across the central portion - whilst from the end of the decade his headquarters building for Doulton's was fronted by an equal tour de force this time in polychromed ceramic. In its heyday Doulton's played an important role in the sculptural decoration of the capital's buildings from W J Neatby's panels in the Food Hall at Harrods and above the entrance to Orchard House, Westminster (c.1900) to Frank Dobson's extraordinarily individualistic reliefs on the river frontage of St Olafs House, by H S Goodhart Rendali, at Hays Wharf on the South Bank of the Thames (1931) and Bayes' witty decorations for the Somers Town Estate and the fifty foot long relief for Doulton House, now happily rehoused in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Bayes's daughter, Jean,

attests to Bennett's care and involvement with these friezes and describes how the architect would drop round on Sunday afternoons after golf to inspect progress on the latest section of , the plaster modello.

Another even more enduring relationship was that between Joseph Armitage and Herbert Baker. Although Armitage's name is virtually unknown to the general public, his work is familiar to millons across the world. Armitage ran an architectural carving business in London, which, at its height, was employing over a hundred craftsmen, and there are few buildings by Baker which are not adorned by his work. The splendid animal

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Fig.8 Doulton House, Albert Embankment, prior to demolition, showing Gilbert Bayes's Ceramic relief in situ (Photograph Paul Atterbury).

Fig.9 Gilbert Bayes, 'Modern Sports', stone relief on the outside of Lord's Cricket Ground (Photograph Bayes Archive).

Fig. 10 Frank Dobson's ceramic relief on the river front of St Olafs House, c.1931.

heads on South Africa House are the work of Joseph Armitage, as is the decorative carving on India House and the Bank of England. Baker sent him

out to New Delhi to advise on the decorative carving there, and all the heraldic devices in the Hall of the Princes were carved in London and sent out for installation; equally, all the decorative carving on Baker's war memorials is Armitage's work. His family have recently donated an extensive archive to the RIBA, which details his involvement in over a thousand architectural projects, and photographs enable us to identify such much- loved London landmarks as the trade-signs on the facade of Heal's in

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Fig.l 1 Smith & Brewer's facade to Heal's, Tottenham Court Road, showing the brifliant use of Joseph Armitage's coloured relief trade signs as window dividers between the second and third floors.

Fig. 12 Joseph Armitage, detail of animal carving on South Mrica House (Photograph Armitage Archive, RIBA)

Tottenham Court Road by Smith & Brewer of 1916, and the dazzling poiychromed and gilded carving on Vincent Harris's eccentric Gothic chapel-like building on the corner of Old Bond Street and Burlington Gardens, designed in 1926 for Atkinson's the perfumiers.

Apart from Armitage, who spec- ialised exclusively in architectural carving, the work provided by such activity was vital for the livelihood of many sculptors; indeed, Eric Gill's occupation carving the Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral was dee-

med to be of such national importance that he was exempted from military service to complete them. His figures of the 'Winds' have already been noted at 55 Broadway, but his most familiar carvings are those that adorn the facade and vestibule of

Fig. 13 Joseph Armitage, decorative carving on the Bank of England (Photograph Armitage Archive, RIBA).

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Fig.7 Eric Gill, 'Maquette for Relief Panel Ariel Between Wisdom and Gaiety', for the B.B.C. , c.1931 (Photograph The Fine Art Society).

from actual architectural sculpture, which I have concentrated on, there are all the statues and public sculptures - Rodin and Moore by the Palace of Westminster, Dalou in Cornhill, Gilbert in Piccadilly and Hepworth on the side of John Lewis's in Oxford Street - not to mention the War Memorials: Ledward's Guards' Memorial facing Horse Guards' Parade and Charles Sargeant Jagger's Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner are two of London's masterpieces. Both Ledward and Jagger also did architectural sculpture in a contemporary manner which is once again becoming acceptable; Jagger's figures of 'Agriculture' and 'Industry' on Imperial Chemical House, Millbank (1928), could equally have been on a building in Rome or Berlin, whilst the four caryatid figures by Gilbert Bayes, Bainbridge Copnall, A J Ayres and Donald Gilbert, on the river-frontage of Colcutt & Hamp's Adelphi

Broadcasting House. Here, the formal group of 'Prospero and Ariel' - a rather terrible pun in stone - and the delightfully playful panels 'Ariel and Children' and 'Ariel between Wisdom and Gaiety' have greeted visitors to the BBC for nearly seventy years. Gill was probably too individualistic to develop a close relationship with any one architect, but with his socialistic insistance on artist as artisan no job was too small to be considered. Gravestones assumed a new importance in the 1930s and by the outbreak of the Second World War the firm of Sculpted Mem- orials and Headstones, pioneered by Gilbert Ledward, had moved to Gill's home at Piggotts in Buckinghamshire. Headstones are a whole different subject, but this firm, which originally had showrooms in Regent Street, involved architects such as Lutyens and Dawber, and a range of sculptors including Alan Durst and Richard Garbe, as well as Gill and Ledward.

Central London is a veritable sculpture gallery for those who are prepared to look. Apart

Fig. 14 Gilbert Ledward working in situ carrying out final refinements to his corner figure on the Adelphi Building (Photograph Henry Moore Institute, Leeds).

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Fig. 15 The Adelpi, general view. Fig. 16 St Martin's School of Art, Charing Cross Road, showing figurative reliefs by Adolphine Rylands.

(1936-8) also display something of the bombast of late Imperial pretensions, but are none the worse for that.

Despite Belcher's gloomy predictions concerning the "grinding, mercenary age" architectural sculpture continued to flourish right up to the Second World War. However, apart from a brief revival in the 1950s, its failure to revive post-war owes much to the change of building materials, and more recently to the fact that new office buildings are deemed to have a relatively short life-span, so what decoration there is is of an equally ephemeral nature.

Sculptors and architects mentioned in text: Prof. Charles John ALLEN 1862-1936;

Joseph ARMITAGE 1880-1945; Charles Robert ASHBEE 1863-1942; Eric AUMONIER; Arthur James John AYRES 1902-1985; Sir Herbert BAKER 1862-

1946; Harry BAThS 1850-1899; Gilbert William BAYES 1872-1953; John BELCHER 1841-

1913; Sir Thomas Pemberthy BENNETT 1887-1980; Thomas Edward COLLCUTT 1840-

1924; Edward Bainbridge COPNALL 1903-1973; Jules-Aime DALOU 1838-1902; Sir Edward Guy

DAWBER 1861-1938; Frank DOBSON 1886-1963; John Francis DOYIL 1840-1913 Alan

Lydiat DURST 1883-1970; Sir

Jacob EPSTEIN 1880-1959; Henry Charles FEHR 1867-1930; Sir George James FRAMPTON

1860-1928; Louis Richard GARBE 1876-1957; Prof. A H GERRARD b.1899; James Glen

Sivewright GIBSON 1858-1925;Sir Alfred GILBERT 1854- 1934; Donald GILBERT 1900-1961; Arthur Eric Rowton GILL 1882-1940; Harry Stuart

GOODHART-RENDEL 1887-1959; Stanley HAMP 1877-1968; Dame Barbara HEPWORTH 1903-1975;

Charles Henry HOLDEN 1875- 1960; Gerard HORSLEY 1862-1917; Charles Sargeant

JAGGER 1885-1934; Frank LYNNJENKINS 1870-1927; Gilbert LEDWARD 1888-1960; Sir Edwin Landseer LUTYENS 1869- 1944;

Henry Spencer MOORE 1898-1986; Wfliiam James NEATBY 1860-1910; Charles James

PIBWORTH 1878-1958; Leonard Aloysius Scott STOKES 1858-1925; Sir William Hamo THORNYCROFT 1850-1925; Charles Harrison TOWNSEND

1851-1928; Henry WILSON 1864-1934; Allan Gairdner WYON 1882-1962.

Bibliography William Aumonier Modern Architectural Sculpture (Arch

Press 1930); Susan Beattie The New Sculpture (Yale 1983); Terry Friedman (ed.) The

Alliance of Sculpture and and Architecture (Henry Moore Centre 1993); A Stuart Gray

FRIBA Edwardian Architecture: A

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Biographical Dictionary (Duckworth 1985); Neville Jason & Lisa Thompson-Pharoah The

Sculpture of Frank Dobson (Henry Moore Foundation/Lund Humphries 1994); Elfrida

Manning Marble and Bronze: The Art and Life of Hamo Thornycroft (Trefoil 1982); Benedict

Read & Peyton Skipwith Sculpture in Britain Between the Wars (The Fine Art Society 1986); Evelyn Silber The Sculpture of Epstein (Phaidon 1986).

PEYTON SKIPWITH Peyton Skipwith is Deputy Managing Director of

The Fine Art Society and Master of The Art Workers Guild. He has contributed articles to various periodicals including The Burlington Magazine, Apollo, Connoisseur, Country Life and World of Interiors and he has lectured widely on various aspects of nineteenth and twentieth century fine and decorative arts. He has originated and organised many exhibitions including Sculpture in Britain between the Wars and Gilbert Ledward RA PRBS 1888-1960 Drawings for Sculpture. A Centenary Exhibition. He is currently working on a Gilbert Bayes exhibition for The Fine Art Society, and a Joseph Armitage exhibition for the RIBA.

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decoration in buildings || architectural sculpture in london 1890-1940

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