is improbable, if not impossible--that those whom I have been advising
as to their studies have the entire command of their time, and are
comparatively free from the demands of every-day business. I not only do
_not_ suppose, but should be as far as possible from desiring, this; for
I am convinced that those whose usual occupations are not such as to
familiarise them with the demands and the difficulties of practical
work, and with the questions which are ever being suggested by actually
working out the details of architecture for practical use, are not
prepared to profit in the fullest degree from the study of old examples.
This study, and the practical work to which it is the only key, must go
on _hand in hand_. There are numberless intricacies and niceties;
problems long since solved; difficulties ingeniously met; clever ways of
making accidents, which in their own nature would cause a blemish, the
means of adding beauty; numberless instances in which decorative or
other treatment was the result of some practical reason which would at
first sight appear to be merely a matter of taste; and a thousand other
instructive and important matters which would be entirely passed over or
fail of approving themselves to the understanding of the student who is
not prepared to appreciate them by the suggestion to themselves of the
same problems, the same difficulties, the same little knots to be
untied, the same little intricacies to be unravelled, and the same calls
for clever contrivance to meet accidental circumstances arising in their
own daily practical work.
The man, on the other hand, who is _always_ at practical work, without
studying much from old examples, becomes dull and normal, or flighty and
crotchety, according to the bent of his own mind; while, if he
constantly supplies and revivifies his practical work by study from
original examples, and fits his mind to receive these lessons by his
practical work, he is prevented from becoming dull and lifeless by the
constant suggestions of brightness and life which he receives, or from
becoming crotchety and over fanciful by the _reasonableness_ which he
finds to pervade the objects which he studies, and the evident aim which
they evince rather to _chasten_ and _conceal_--to subject to the
doctrine of reserve--their clever contrivances than to flaunt them
obviously to public gaze.
To carry out this mutual co-operation of practical work and the study of
old examples, I would recommend you always to note down any puzzle you
fall into in your work, and any doubt as to how a perplexity is to be
met or difficulty to be got over, and any uncertainty which may occur to
you as to the best mode of treating a particular feature; so that, when
you next go out sketching, you may have a list of questions for which
you have to seek for practical answers from the old architects
themselves, still speaking to us and instructing us through their works;
and in the same way you may have, ever and anon, answers suggested by
the old men to questions which you have not yet thought of asking, but
which in your practical work you will soon find to arise. This playing
of practice and study into each other’s hands will add vastly to the
pleasure and profit of both, and will keep up a zealous and lively
interest in your minds which will make your return to business only
second in enjoyment to your setting out on a sketching tour; the one
keeping alive by practical use the pleasure and interest of the lessons
learned by the other.
I must now say a word, which perhaps ought to have come at the beginning
of my last lecture, about preparation of another kind for this class of
study.
I need hardly dwell upon the obvious necessity for having acquired at
the outset, and for constantly continuing to acquire, a knowledge _from
books_ of the subject you are studying.
At the beginning of this century it was wholly unknown; since that time
it has gradually become better and better understood; and it is clear
that, to carry on this cumulative process, each generation of students
must take as their basis the full amount of knowledge yet attained,
and--riding as it were on the crest of the wave--must add their own
progress to that attained by their predecessors. I will not attempt to
enumerate books. If you are anxious to follow up the subject, you will
already have found them out or will soon do so. I will mention, however,
that you must not limit your reading to _English_ works, for the French
have done, I think, even more than our own countrymen to elucidate the
subject; and among English writers let Professor Willis take a leading
place as your instructor.
But what you have to learn from books is not architecture alone. I will
not stop to insist on the necessity of general reading, just as every
one should follow up: some of the usual classes of general reading are,
however (if it were possible) even more directly important in their
minute details to architects than to others: I would more especially
instance _historical_ knowledge, and all that tends to illustrate the
changes which have influenced civilisation, and through it have borne
more or less directly upon art.
Though antiquarianism is very distinct from art, and though the
architectural student should be always on his guard against the danger
of reversing the relative positions of the artistic and the
archæological portions of his studies, it is nevertheless manifest that
the two can never be wholly disconnected. You must, therefore, follow up
antiquarian studies so far as they have a direct or a real bearing upon
your main pursuit.
I would mention, in passing, that there is one antiquarian science which
is a special link of connection between the present and the past: I
refer to _Heraldry_, a branch of study which we too much neglect, but
which has very strong claims upon our attention.
Then, again, you must always study the _meaning_ and _object_ of every
ancient building which you are examining, that you may know how far its
practical characteristics bear upon or are alien to such as belong to
our own day. In _ecclesiastical_ works this becomes a practical and
necessary study; for, though the ritual uses and customs have greatly
changed, many of them hold good in our own day, either directly or in
some modified or parallel form, which connects the study of the ritual
arrangements of ancient churches more or less directly with our own. The
study, then, of ecclesiastical and ritual history and antiquities is one
of those directly necessary to the church architect; though, as in the
case of antiquarianism, he must avoid the danger of making it in any
degree take the place, instead of assisting and guiding his study, of
architecture itself.
I would here take the opportunity of urging upon those who purpose
devoting themselves especially to Mediæval architecture the necessity of
making themselves acquainted, in some reasonable degree at least, and
the more thoroughly the better, with the whole range of the history of
art. It is only by means of such knowledge that we are able to
comprehend the true position which Mediæval architecture takes in the
long stream of art history.
The classic styles are the parents of the Mediæval styles, and without a
good knowledge of them the Gothic architect is unable to understand his
own architecture. More than this, however: Greek art--properly so
called--is the parent of Gothic sculpture, whether foliated or relating
to the human figure; and in respect of the latter it is (next to nature)
the best corrective of its faults. I urge upon you, therefore, the study
of _Greek_ sculpture of the best _early_ schools, as a direct means of
perfecting that of your own works.
Then again, with Roman architecture, and the course of its decadence:
how replete is its history with anticipatory suggestions as to the rise
of the new architecture which after a long period of darkness sprang up
from its decayed roots! And equally instructive is the study of
Byzantine architecture--that “light in a dark place” which was destined
to shed its rays so beneficently on the rising, but yet embryo, arts of
the Middle Ages.
A most interesting addition has recently been made to our knowledge of
this style by the researches of the Count de Vogüé among the ruined
cities recently discovered in the mountains of Central Syria.
[Illustration: Fig. 192.--El Barah, Central Syria.]
These cities seem to have been in prosperity up to the moment of the
Mahometan conquest of Syria, but to have been suddenly deserted, as in
one day, on the approach of the Arabian armies, and since then to have
remained untouched but by the elements and earthquakes; so that they
hand down to us the earlier Byzantine architecture (as practised in
Syria) in the most perfect and instructive manner. In these wonderful
cities we have not only the churches, but nearly every description of
Byzantine building, either nearly perfect, or--when thrown down by
earthquakes, as is often the case--with the parts still lying as they
fell, so that the entire design can be perfectly understood.
These remains supply the connecting link between the Byzantine and the
old Classic styles; but it is the _later_ buildings, such as St. Mark’s
at Venice, which give the link at the opposite end of the chain,
connecting it with the churches of Aquitaine, and through them with our
own Romanesque and transitional works; while the various productions of
Byzantine art of the same period, with which Western Europe was so
liberally supplied, became the germs from which much of the
ornamentation of our own earlier works originated. All this it behoves
the Gothic architect to study; nor should he neglect the parallel
supplies of suggestions from the _Mahometan_ styles--themselves the
offspring of the Byzantine. But still more incumbent is it on him to
follow out that direct _catena_ by which, in _Western_ Europe, the Roman
style passed through the Early Basilican phase in Southern Italy, the
Lombardic in Northern Italy,[82] and the various derivative forms of
Romanesque in Southern France and Rhineland, as well as in the less
familiar European countries.
In all these varied courses of gradual change it is yet more
interesting, and far more profitable, to trace out--as distinct from all
questions of architectural style--the ritual and practical changes
through which the basilica, so early adopted as the great type of the
Christian Church, became the parent of the typical form made use of to
our own day and for our own churches, and those by which the
later-introduced Greek cross was perfected into the form of the
Byzantine churches, and the less usual circular type into that of a
series of exceptional churches both in the East and West. The _first_ of
these _catenæ_, in particular, is most interesting to ourselves, as
showing that our own form of church is our direct inheritance from the
earliest Christian temple: and, though we may do well to consider how
far the series of changes through which it has reached us may be
advantageously followed up by any additional modification to meet the
true demands of our own day, yet God forbid that we should so far forget
the claims of our long descent as to let go this precious inheritance of
our fathers![83]
There is, however, another more direct kind of preparation, on which I
desire most urgently to insist. I mean your personal training _as
artists_. True it is that your sketching tours will be a great means of
promoting this; but this will not do alone: you must constantly strive
to train your eye and your hand to artistic perception and skill. You
should take lessons from first-rate teachers both in drawing and in
colouring; you should take some means of training yourselves in drawing
the human figure and in animal drawing, and even in modelling if
opportunity permits. These means ought unquestionably to be afforded to
the architectural students by this Academy as a special and most
important and essential part of their training. That such is not the
case at present is, I believe, the result of the cramped and
insufficient housing which has been allowed us, and I do trust that this
hindrance will soon be removed.[84]
You should further practise yourselves in drawing and modelling from
natural leaves and flowers, and, side by side with this, in drawing from
fine examples of sculptured foliage, whether natural or conventional,
for which last-named object you have great facilities offered by the
Architectural Museum; and all this, I would suggest, can be going on
during the winter months when you cannot sketch from actual buildings.
Without this training you will find yourselves at a great disadvantage
in studying for original works; your attempts at drawing sculpture,
whether figures or foliage, will disgust and dishearten you, and even
your sketches from purely architectural objects will be both dispiriting
to yourselves at the time, will fail to express the true feeling of the
works themselves, and will convey no agreeable impressions when you
revert to them in after years.
You will have gathered from incidental remarks as I have proceeded that
I have not supposed you to limit your attention and study to
architecture properly so called. Time does not allow me to go farther
into the subject of collateral arts; but let me say that, as
architecture unites all arts in one, so you must gather into her garner
the spoils to be collected from the study of every art by which
architecture may be ennobled and enriched.
I have said nothing in the course of the foregoing remarks as to the
choice or preference you would have to exercise among specimens of
different Mediæval periods and styles, but I have said enough to show
that I do not suppose your studies of the old buildings in our own and
neighbouring countries to be limited to one selected period, nor even to
what can be strictly called Mediæval works, as much that is useful can
be gathered (particularly in domestic work) from buildings of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is absolutely necessary, too,
that you should understand and be familiar with _all_ the varieties of
our old architecture, because, though you may not follow them in your
own works, you may be frequently called upon to _restore_ them, though
this reason is hardly necessary to lead you to master the _whole_ range
of Mediæval art.
Still, however, you cannot choose but follow more lovingly the works of
the periods which most approve themselves to your minds as the days when
art was the most vigorous, noble, and full of deep and true sentiment.
For my own part, though I am less exclusive than many of my friends, I
must confess that I find a difficulty in sketching, unless with a
directly practical object, from works either so early as to be rude or
so late as to be enervated. And while I beg you to make yourselves
masters of the _whole_ range, I am far from asking you to check the
genial current of the soul by endeavouring to love all varieties alike,
or to give equal attention to those which are and those which are not in
harmony with your inner feelings.
I have dwelt much, in my earlier lectures, on the study of the vigorous
and onward-striving works of the transition: and I confess that to me
this is the most captivating period. I have already sufficiently
indicated the leading examples of it, though you will find it
interspersed with other styles all over the country. I think myself that
no style is more calculated to excite a grandeur of sentiment, but none
seems to me to have been so little studied from English examples, or
rather, I should have said, from _British_ examples, for it is as finely
developed in Wales and in Scotland as it is in England. I have said a
good deal about studying it as a _historical_ phase of the style, but
this, though necessary, is in point of fact a very secondary matter. You
must much rather study it _artistically_, with reference to its
intrinsic merits and its noble beauty, and _morally_, as illustrating
the elevated sentiment and noble earnestness of those who, while
pressing forward a new style of art, generated at every step such
glorious productions.
I have said less, perhaps, and spoken with less enthusiasm of the
fully-developed Early Pointed style, not from a lower appreciation of
its merits, but because it seems rather a breathing-place--a point of
attainment--in the march, than especially a point of noble pressing
onward. Nor need I enumerate the special objects of study belonging to
the period. They are sown broadcast over our own and neighbouring lands,
and form the staple of our most magnificent, and a large proportion of
our humble, Mediæval remains. No tour, however, is more prolific of
instruction in this style than that of the northern abbeys, and this
tour may be repeated again and again with ever fresh delight, and
extended with great profit over the borders and far away into Scotland.
After this we come to another transition, and--the period of rest being
at an end--we find again much of the same earnest striving as during the
earlier transition. I would recommend a very special amount of study to
be devoted to this style--for it is not reasonable to suppose that
traceried windows are to be banished from our revival; and loving, as
most of us do, the vigour of the earlier periods, this second
transition--the connecting link between the earlier and the middle
periods--offers most valuable material for our own developments: indeed,
I cannot conceive of a more promising course of corrective training for
those among us who have followed early and foreign work till it has
grown into an actual mania, than to set themselves the task of following
up, _nolens volens_, the minute study in all its details of a carefully
selected series of work of this second English transition.
For such a course I would especially recommend the following examples:--
The greater part of Netley Abbey; all the eastern portions of
Westminster Abbey; the eastern arm of Lincoln Cathedral;[85] the
chapter-house[86] and cloisters at Salisbury; all that remains of
Newstead Abbey; and the nave of Lichfield Cathedral. Of a period a shade
later I would recommend the nave of St. Mary’s Abbey at York; the whole
of Tintern Abbey; the chapter-houses at Southwell and at York, and the
eastern parts at St. Albans. The two latter are, however, productions of
the completed style rather than of the transition, and to give a list of
objects of study in that style would be almost hopeless, for the country
is filled with them. Nor do I admire so exclusively the earlier work as
to exclude from the better half of our Mediæval range yet later
specimens of the Middle Pointed. I cannot but think the gateways of St.
Augustine’s at Canterbury, of Battle Abbey, and of that of Bury St.
Edmund’s; the halls of Mayfield, Penshurst, and the lost hall at
Worcester; the lost chapel and the still existing crypt of St.
Stephen’s; the choir at Winchelsea; the Lady Chapel at Chichester; and a
long list of other buildings of the earlier part of the fourteenth
century, to be works claiming our high regard and admiration, and I
consequently recommend them also to your careful study.
The very latest phase of the Decorated style is often weak, but I will
not suppose _you_ to be so much so as to be unable to sever its beauties
from its faults, or to be in danger of condemning or admiring good and
bad alike; and a yet more vigorous discretion is needed in studying
from the works of the succeeding ages, though, _all through_, you will
find not only objects of high intrinsic merit, but constant suggestions
capable of being advantageously _translated_ into a more vigorous
style.[87]
A still more important subject I have as yet but incidentally touched
upon. I refer to the _practical_ character of your studies of ancient
examples, as viewed in connection with the actual _structural_ and
_mechanical_ qualities of the examples themselves, and the learning from
ancient examples the principles of Mediæval construction and practical
art, and their bearings upon _our own_ constructive and practical
operations. Thus, for example, you must give special and systematic
study to the principles of _vaulting_ as exemplified by Mediæval
buildings. I have, in one of my lectures, recommended, as a prelude to
such study, your reading Professor Willis’s paper on the subject in the
_Transactions of the Institute of British Architects_ and M. Viollet le
Duc’s in his _Dictionary_. You will be the better prepared after this to
work the subjects out for yourselves. It is a particularly difficult
matter to study, both in its own nature and because the work is usually
out of reach. You should watch for opportunities offered by scaffoldings
being raised under vaultings, and make accurate measurements. You must
study not only the lines and their setting out, but the _stone cutting_
and _jointing_, and all kinds of practical questions, the very existence
of which you cannot understand till you have given much attention to the
subject. Then, when you have obtained a perfect insight into these
questions, you will do well to consider whether there are or are not
practical faults in the old work which we should do well to remedy. So
in timber-work we should master the old system of construction, and then
think how far it is perfect and where open to improvement, and also how
far the old system as applied to _oak_ is suited to our own
constructions in _fir_, and what are the practical variations suggested
by the material. And so on through stone-work, iron-work, brass-work
(whether cast or wrought), lead-work, silver-work, and jewellery. You
must not content yourselves with studying and sketching from the work as
an architectural or decorative design, but must _dissect_ and
_investigate_ it, and find out its construction, and how far that
construction has modified or suggested its design, or how far this may
result from not only the _construction_, but the nature of the
_material_.
In respect of the _metal-work_ and other kinds of decorative art, you
will find great advantage from carefully reading Mr. Burges’s lectures,
given some time back before the Society of Arts.
By thus following up your studies from _all_ points of view, whether
antiquarian, historical, artistic, ritual, utilitarian, or practical and
mechanical, you will obtain that perfect understanding of Mediæval art
which is necessary to enable you to carry on its revival and practice
both with _knowledge_ and _intelligence_.
I now come to the _actual practice_ of the lessons learned by such a
course of study as I have been endeavouring to shadow forth.
As I said on a former occasion, I will not go into the general question
of the _revival_ of Gothic architecture, but will assume it as a _fait
accompli_, and proceed to consider some questions as to the practical
carrying of it out.
One point which has given rise to much difference of opinion is the
question of what _period_ and variety of Mediæval architecture we should
best take as the groundwork of our own developments.
When, during the long interval between the cessation of Mediæval
architecture and our own day, it was temporarily returned to in any
special instance, it seems to have been viewed rather as a _dormant_
than an _extinct_ art, and the style chosen was always its _latest_
phase; as if it had only to be re-awakened at the point at which it had
fallen asleep. And in the same manner, in our own day, nearly all the
earlier works of the revival were in the latest form of the style, as if
the revival was the mere prolongation of a chain, and to be attached to
its last link.