Neo-classical attitudes
Timothy Bainbridge
The Greek Revival J. Mordaunt Crook (John Murray E10) The author calls this book, which is subtitled ' Neo-Classical Attitudes in British Architecture, 1760 1870,' "a work of explanation rather than documentation." This admirable and necessary purpose is only partly fulfilled, just as the recent Council of Europe exhibition failed to do more than provide the materials for a study of the purposes and achievements of the Neoclassical movement.
Dr Crook begins with a survey of those travellers, archaeologists, connoisseurs and architects who were responsible for the rediscovery of Greece. It is easy to forget that until the eighteenth century Greece, under Turkish rule, was little known, and that Rome enjoyed a clear ascendancy as the repository of classical culture. Only with the rediscovery of purer Greek models in architecture did the buildings of Rome be gin to seem a little clumsy, even a little decadent. These purer models were the great monuments of mainland Greece, of South Italy and Sicily, and Asia Minor and the Near East as far south as Baalbek and Palmyra. Dr Crook's discussion of the tra vellers who visited and published accounts of these areas is most skilfully arranged; if his approach to them is more technical than that contained in Terence Spencer's Fair Greece, Sad Relic, it is also more illumina ting in that it shows exactly what these men, who must be considered the initiators of the Greek Revival, found most appealing. Foremost amongst published accounts were the four volumes of Stuart and Revett's The Antiquities of Athens (1762 1816), which provided the first trustworthy plans and elevations of many of the most frequently imitated buildings, as well as details of individual ornaments. Dr Crook continues the story as far as C. R. Cockerell and H. W. Inwood (who built St Pancras Church) by way of showing how architects continued to draw inspiration from Greek models until well into the nineteenth century.
However, to demonstrate that materials were available to eighteenth-century architects for a Greek revival does not ' explain ' the revival. The question which remains is: why should a Greek-inspired style have seemed appropriate to the architects and to the public of the period? Dr Crook goes some way towards answering this in the second part of his book, entitled The Greek Revival: Classic and Romantic.' His characterisation of the architecture which resulted from the 'return to the antique ' is that it "can be recognised by its distribution of antique elements according to rationalist theories of design." So far, so good; but then he mentions "the presence of Romantic elements in Neo-classical design," and immediately we are borne into the controversies surrounding ' Classic' and 'Romantic.' This is a debate which seems to me to be unnecessary here, for as long as we remember that these words each refer to a particular permutation of qualities (which is not to deny the existence of common qualities) much of the confusion can be avoided for present purposes. Dr Crook declares there to have been two traditions at work in the return to Greek models, one pragmatic, empirical and English, the other programmatic, rationalist and French. (There is for that matter a certain inevitability evident in a national architecture which moves from Inigo Jones to Burlingtonian Palladianism and then, via the ' tran sitional phenomenon' of the Adam style, back to Greece; and a convincing ' explana tion ' of the Greek Revival could well be worked out in historical terms.) Of the French theorists the most important was Laugier, although in England his influence was negligible until his ideas were adopted by Soane.
At this point Dr Crook's distinction between the English and French traditions begins to break down, and on his own evi dence. For England too had her theorists, there being no doubt that the notions of the Sublime and of the Picturesque exercised considerable influence on the development of the Greek Revival. The author's account of this influence, although brief, is most suggestive; much more might have been made of the relation between the taste for the Antique and the aesthetic speculations of English writers, for it is here, I believe, that the true ' explanation ' of the Greek Revival is to be found. Instead the remain der of this second section is given over to the practitioners of the revival style and to the reception accorded their works, the details of which are a most illuminating chapter in the history of taste.
The third section is a survey, in 250 photographs, of Greek Revival architecture in Great Britain, from ' Athenian' Stuart in the 1750s to ' Greek ' Thomson in the 1860s. This is a most impressive collection, and it includes several very telling juxtaposi tions of Athenian buildings as they appear in the archaeological publications beside the eighteenth-century works based upon them. Included too are a number of visionary designs which give some idea of the aspirations of the revivalist movement. It is this section which almost, if not quite, justifies the book's high price. Extremely valuable too is the concluding twenty-threepage bibliography. Its excellence is symp tomatic of the principal virtues of this book, in which Dr Crook shows himself to be most skilful in his handling of the sources and well aware of the complexity of the whole subject. His is a most sympathetic treatment, but as an ' explanation ' of the Greek Revival it is less satisfactory.
Timothy Bainbridge, who has just completed a thesis on neo-classicism, works in the Conservative Party Research Department.
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