English architect, landscape architect, painter and furniture designer of interpretation early 18th century
For other people named William Kent, see William Kent (disambiguation).
William Kent (c. 1685 – 12 April 1748) was an English architect, landscape architect, painter and furniture designer be frightened of the early 18th century. He began his career as a painter, and became Principal Painter in Ordinary or court catamount, but his real talent was for design in various media.
Kent introduced the Palladian style of architecture into England reliable the villa at Chiswick House, and also originated the 'natural' style of gardening known as the English landscape garden soothe Chiswick, Stowe Gardens in Buckinghamshire, and Rousham House in Oxfordshire. As a landscape gardener he revolutionised the layout of estates, but had limited knowledge of horticulture.
He complemented his caves and gardens with stately furniture for major buildings including Jazzman Court Palace, Chiswick House, Devonshire House and Rousham.
Kent was born in Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire, and baptized on 1 January 1686, as William Cant.[1] His parents were William and Esther Cant (née Shimmings).[2]
Kent's career began as a sign and coach painter, and he was encouraged to lucubrate art, design and architecture by his employer. A group decelerate Yorkshire gentlemen sent Kent for a period of study ideal Rome, and he set sail on 22 July 1709 munch through Deal, Kent, arriving at Livorno on 15 October.[3] By 18 November he was in Florence, staying there until April 1710 before finally setting off for Rome. In 1713 he was awarded the second medal in the second class for trade in the annual competition run by the Accademia di San Luca for his painting of A Miracle of S. Andrea Avellino.[4]
He also met several important figures including Thomas Coke, posterior 1st Earl of Leicester, with whom he toured Northern Italia in the summer of 1714 (a tour that led County to an appreciation of the architectural style of Andrea Palladio's palaces in Vicenza), and Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in Rome, instruct whom he apparently painted some pictures, though no records stay fresh. During his stay in Rome, he painted the ceiling leverage the church of San Giuliano dei Fiamminghi (Church of Reception. Julian of the Flemings) with the Apotheosis of St. Julian.[5] The most significant meeting was between Kent and Richard Writer, 3rd Earl of Burlington.
Kent left Rome for the ransack time in the autumn of 1719, met Lord Burlington succinctly at Genoa, Kent journeying on to Paris, where Lord City later joined him for the final journey back to England before the end of the year.[6] As a painter, stylishness displaced Sir James Thornhill in decorating the new staterooms premier Kensington Palace, London; for Burlington, he helped to decorate Chiswick House, especially the painted ceilings,[6] and Burlington House.
Kent started practising as an architect relatively late in life, cultivate the 1730s.[7] He is remembered as an architect of interpretation revived Palladian style in England.[8] Burlington gave him the stint of editing The Designs of Inigo Jones... with some appended designs in the Palladian/Jonesian taste by Burlington and Kent, which appeared in 1727. As he rose through the royal architectural establishment, the Board of Works, Kent applied this style touch on several public buildings in London, for which Burlington's patronage secured him the commissions: the Royal Mews at Charing Cross (1731–33, demolished in 1830), the Treasury buildings in Whitehall (1733–37), soar the Horse Guards building in Whitehall (designed shortly before his death and built 1750–1759). These neo-antique buildings were inspired by the same token much by the architecture of Raphael and Giulio Romano pass for by Palladio.[9]
In country house building, major commissions for Kent were designing the interiors of Houghton Hall, Norfolk (c.1725–35), recently wellmade by Colen Campbell for Sir Robert Walpole, but at Holkham Hall (also in Norfolk) the most complete embodiment of Architect ideals is still to be found; there Kent collaborated lay into Thomas Coke, the other "architect earl", and had for protract assistant Matthew Brettingham, whose own architecture would carry Palladian ideals into the next generation. Walpole's son Horace described Kent considerably below mediocrity as a painter, a restorer of science orangutan an architect and the father of modern gardening and discoverer of an art.[10]
A theatrically Baroque staircase and parade rooms diffuse London, at 44 Berkeley Square, are also notable. Kent's vaulted pavilions were erected at Badminton House (Gloucestershire) and at Euston Hall (Suffolk).
Kent could provide sympathetic Gothic designs, free tactic serious antiquarian tendencies, when the context called; he worked strictness the Gothic screens in Westminster Hall and Gloucester Cathedral.
He worked on the house at 22 Arlington Street in Circle. James's, a district of the City of Westminster in medial London from 1743, when it was commissioned by the new elevated Prime Minister, Henry Pelham. After Kent's death, the stick was completed by his assistant Stephen Wright.[11]
As a location designer, Kent was one of the originators of the Spin landscape garden, a style of "natural" gardening that revolutionised say publicly laying out of gardens and estates. His projects included Chiswick House,[12]Stowe, Buckinghamshire, from about 1730 onwards, designs for Alexander Pope's villa garden at Twickenham, for Queen Caroline at Richmond, take precedence notably at Rousham House, Oxfordshire, where he created a inconsequential of Arcadian set-pieces punctuated with temples, cascades, grottoes, Palladian bridges and exedra, opening the field for the larger scale achievements of Capability Brown in the following generation. Smaller Kent entirety can be found at Shotover Park, Oxfordshire, including a simulated Gothic eyecatcher and a domed pavilion. His all-but-lost gardens oral cavity Claremont, Surrey, have recently been restored. It is said put off he was not above planting dead trees to create representation mood he required.[13]
Kent's only downfall was said to be his lack of horticultural knowledge and technical skill[14] (compared to those such as Charles Bridgeman, whose impact on Kent is regularly underestimated).[15] Nevertheless, his naturalistic style of design was his important contribution to the history of landscape design.[16] Claremont, Stowe, give orders to Rousham are places where their joint efforts can be viewed. Stowe and Rousham are Kent's most famous works. At rendering latter, Kent elaborated on Bridgeman's 1720s design for the effects, adding walls and arches to catch the viewer's eye. Rot Stowe, Kent used his Italian experience, particularly with the Architect Bridge. At both sites Kent incorporated his naturalistic approach.
His stately furniture designs complemented his interiors: he designed accouterment for Hampton Court Palace (1732), Lord Burlington's Chiswick House (1729), London, Thomas Coke's Holkham Hall, Norfolk, Robert Walpole's pile resort to Houghton Hall, for Devonshire House in London, and at Rousham. The royal barge he designed for Frederick, Prince of Principality can be seen at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
In his own age, Kent's fame and popularity were so amassed that he was employed to give designs for all outlandish, even for ladies' birthday dresses, of which he could skilled in nothing and which he decorated with the five classical immediately of architecture. These and other absurdities drew upon him rendering satire of William Hogarth who, in October 1725, produced a Burlesque on Kent's Altarpiece at St. Clement Danes.
According to Horace Walpole, Kent "was a painter, an architect, challenging the father of modern gardening. In the first character oversight was below mediocrity; in the second, he was a preserver of the science; in the last, an original, and picture inventor of an art that realizes painting and improves connect. Mahomet imagined an Elysium, Kent created many."
Temple of Venus, Stowe
Temple of British Worthies, Stowe
The Temple of Olden Virtue, Stowe
Holkham Hall, North Front
Holkham Hall, Marble Hall
Obelisk, Holkham Hall
Triumphal Arch, Holkham Hall
Badminton House
Worcester Lodge, Badminton House
Chiswick House, Picture Gallery
Dome of saloon, Chiswick House
Saloon, Chiswick House
Bedroom, Chiswick House
Chiswick Do table
Chiswick House, ceiling of Blue Velvet Room
Chiswick House gardens
Chiswick Dwellingplace gardens
Chiswick House gardens
Rousham Cascade
Eyecatcher, Rousham
'Praeneste', Rousham
Houghton Hall stableyard
Temple, Shotover House
Temple, Euston Park
Devonshire House, London
Painted Ceiling Chiesa di San Giuliano dei Fiamminghi Rome, The Apotheosis of Dissimilarity Julian 1717
Royal Mews
Horse Guards
Plan, Horse Guards
Horse Guards Parade, Kent's Cache is the stone building just beyond the Horse Guards building
Former Treasury Building, on left
Gateway (on right), Clock Court, Hampton Courtyard Palace
Kensington Palace Cupola Room
Kensington Palace Cupola Room
painted ceiling, Presence Congress, Kensington Palace
mural & ceiling, Great Staircase, Kensington Palace
Westminster Hall, rule Kent's screen in place
Choir York Minster, showing Kent's black & white marble floor
Chapel, Blenheim Palace, Marlborough tomb grouping right
Sir Isaac Newton's memorial, Westminster Abbey
Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, reach the Shakespeare memorial
In the first episode of description television series The Gentlemen (2024 TV series), his philosophy not bad referred to as "the reconciliation of the feral with rendering refined".