ARCHITECTURE
Drawings at the Courtauld Institute
This exhibition, helped by a brilliant catalogue, shows drawings dating from about 154o to about 183o of houses, ceilings, monu- ments and stage settings. Since so many good drawings are at the moment stored away in packing crates in safe areas it is small and unassuming, but it suggests what might be done in ordinary es, and is very enjoyable in itself. Mr. Anthony Blunt, Mr. John Summerson and the other lenders of their possessions should have our thanks. These are works that are " scorned by those who collect drawings on purely aesthetic, grounds, and that are generally considered as being of interest only to the specialist in the history or the science of architecture " ; but if a few amateurs of pictures who in the ordinary way would not look twice at an architectural drawing come here on account of e present shortage of London art exhibitions they will find many sensitive drawings. Some of these have a power of suggesting masses by outlines and washes that shames many present-day draughtsmen, and they all shame that popular type of architectural drawing that uses fashionable conventions for trees and liquid-
ooking, purple shading. But they also make our " utility " draw- ings of proposed buildings look inadequate because—sketchy as most of them are—they suggest the drama and personality of a building in its setting. They were done before " decorative " had become a word of abuse, and were calculated to charm rather han to bully or mystify a client.
What client would not be charmed by the Repton-Nash view of the house in Co. Roscommon built for Lord Lorton in 18 to? It is in the descriptive topographical style of the date ; the style that Turner made himself such a master of in his early tours through England and Wales, and that provided such a sober background for his dashing excursions of later years. In the wo paintings by Hubert Robert of classical ruins architecture has merely occasioned easel pictures, but they have drama. And in order to suggest what a powerful driving force drama was in large-scale architecture from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries there are a dozen theatrical drawings, ranging from sketches by Francesco Salviati (1510-63) and Bernini to a drawing for a drop-scene at the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, done by David Roberts in 1831. We cling to, but have degraded, the theatrical quality in architecture. We still yearn for drama in buildings of any size. But compare the dramatic masses sug- ested by the merest scribbles in this exhibition with drama as
e know it and use it in our buildings today: in our enormous actory blocks, dramatically blank, or in our office and flat build- ngs, where it is strictly confined by the demands of utility and f what will look good in a brochure. We allow it in details : in mahogany pediment behind the bottles in the saloon bar, a ouple of swags on a nearly-Georgian bank façade or a bastard oulding above the neon cinema lights. We in England have fine a sense of architectural drama as anyone if only we could evelop again our old conscience about the appearance of build-
• The sketch by Soane for the river front of a proposed ouse of Parliament shows the classical creation of drama by he old relation and piling-up of masses, for which English chitects have a latent genius. Some, " survivor and legatee the last phase of English eighteenth-century architecture," tried restraint in decoration almost as far as some present-day unctional architects, but his abstract sense of proportion was so trong that this restraint only deepened the dramatic effect of is buildings.
The Gothic revival cultivates other fields. Sir Gilbert Scott efers in his Recollections to the time he spent listening to Sir ohn Soave's lectures as a " dull, blank period." Yet in its any romantic phase its theatrical quality was its whole point. owever futile and gimcrack it was Fonthill Abbey certainly
drama. The large water-colour here, probably by John Innh, §hows all the good points that Wyatt made in the build-
• It shows how it cut the light and cupped the shadow on Wiltshire hilltop to form a composition that was rich in aeitements for the eye. The early Gothic Revival, that gave birth, took the frills of mediaeval Gothic and turned architecture to good theatre, which it is a better thing for it to be than a lank or an eyesore. Before the present war began our architects ere experimenting: the better ones with new materials, the orse ones with old styles. In the matter of drama, they were Ply playing charades. This exhibition suggests dramatic force S a quality worth cultivating in architecture; and it will be Pec.111y so when the experiments are over and a great building
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