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Sir John Vanbrugh (; 24 January 1664 (baptised) – 26 March 1726) was an English architect, dramatist and herald, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard.Berkowitz, "Preface"; McCormick, p. 4. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. He was Knight Bachelor in 1714.Robert Chambers, Book of Days
Vanbrugh was in many senses a radical throughout his life. As a young man and a committed Whig, he was part of the scheme to overthrow James II and put William III on the throne. He was imprisoned by the French as a political prisoner. In his career as a playwright, he offended many sections of Restoration and 18th century society, not only by the sexual explicitness of his plays, but also by their messages in defence of feminism in marriage. He was attacked on both counts, and was one of the prime targets of Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage.
In his architecture career, he created what came to be known as English Baroque. His architectural work was as bold and daring as his early political activism and marriage-themed plays, and jarred conservative opinions on the subject.
Architectural historian Kerry Downes is sceptical of earlier historians' claims of a lower middle class background, and writes that a 19th-century suggestion that Giles Vanbrugh was a sugar-baker has been misunderstood. "Sugar-baker" implies wealth, as the term refers not to a confectionery but to the owner of a sugar house, a factory for the refining of raw sugar from Barbados. Sugar refining would normally have been combined with sugar trading, which was a lucrative business. Downes' example of one sugar baker's house in Liverpool, estimated to bring in Pound sterling40,000 a year in trade from Barbados, throws a new light on Vanbrugh's social background, one rather different from the picture of a backstreet Chester sweetshop as painted by Leigh Hunt in 1840 and reflected in many later accounts.Downes, pp. 32–33.
To dispel the myth of Vanbrugh's humble origins, Downes took pains to explore Vanbrugh's background, closely examining the family and connexions of each of his four grandparents: Vanbrugh, Jacobs or Jacobson, Carleton, and Croft, summing up the characteristics of each line and concluding that, far from being of lower middle class origins, Vanbrugh was descended from Anglo-Flemish or Netherlandish Protestant merchants who settled in London in the 16th and 17th centuries, minor courtiers, and country gentry. The complex web of kinship Downes' research shows that Vanbrugh had ties to many of England's leading mercantile, gentry, and noble families. These ties reveal the decidedly Protestant and sometimes radical milieu out of which Vanbrugh's own political opinions came. They also gave him a very wide social network that would play a role in all sections of his career: architectural, ceremonial, dramatic, military, political, and social.
Taken in this context, though he has sometimes been viewed as an odd or unqualified appointee to the College of Arms, it is not surprising, given the social expectations of his day, that by descent his credentials for his offices there were sound. His forebears, both Flemish/Dutch and English, were heraldry, and their coats of arms can be traced in three out of four cases, revealing that Vanbrugh was of gentle descent (Jacobson, of Antwerp and London the; Carleton of Imber Court; Croft Castle).
After growing up in a large household in Chester (12 children of his mother's second marriage survived infancy), the question of how Vanbrugh spent the years from age 18 to 22 (after he left school) was long unanswered, with the baseless suggestion sometimes made that he had been studying architecture in France (stated as fact in the Dictionary of National Biography). In 1681 records name a 'John Vanbrugg' working for William Matthews, Giles Vanbrugh's cousin. It was not unusual for a merchant's son to follow in his father's trade and seek similar work in business, making use of family ties and connections. However, Robert Williams proved in an article in the Times Literary Supplement ("Vanbrugh's Lost Years", 3 September 1999) that Vanbrugh was in India for part of this period, working for the East India Company at their trading post in Surat, Gujarat where his uncle, Edward Pearce, had been Governor.The English Factories in India, 1655–1660, William Foster, 1921 However, Vanbrugh never mentioned this experience in writing. Scholars debate whether evidence of his exposure to Indian architecture can be detected in any of his architectural designs.
The picture of a well-connected youth is reinforced by the fact that Vanbrugh in January 1686 took up an officer's commission in his distant relative the Earl of Huntingdon's foot regiment.Summerson, J. Architecture in Britain 1530–1830 (Yale 1993) p. 252. Since commissions were in the gift of the commanding officer, Vanbrugh's entry as an officer shows that he did have the kind of family network that was then essential to a young man starting out in life. Even so in August 1686 he left this position when the regiment was ordered to help garrison Guernsey.
In spite of the distant noble relatives and the lucrative sugar trade, Vanbrugh never seemed to possess any capital for business ventures (such as the Haymarket Theatre), but always had to rely on loans and backers. The fact that Giles Vanbrugh had twelve children to support and set up in life may go some way towards explaining the debts that were to plague John all his life.
Vanbrugh's younger brothers, Charles MP and Philip VanBrugh, Governor of Newfoundland Colony, were naval commanders.
Vanbrugh's own first and second cousins included Sir Humphrey Ferrers (1652–1678), Sir Herbert Croft Bt (1652–1720), Roger Cave and Cave's sister, wife of Sir Orlando Bridgeman Bt (1650–1701).
His life is sharply bisected by this prison experience, which he entered at age 24 and emerged from at 29, after having spent, as Downes puts it,page 76, Sir John Vanbrugh A Biography, Kerry Downes, 1987, Sidgwick and Jackson, half his adult life in captivity. It seems to have left him with a lasting distaste for the French political system but also with a taste for the comic dramatists and the architecture of France.
The often-repeated claim that Vanbrugh wrote part of his comedy The Provoked Wife in the Bastille is based on allusions in a couple of much later memoirs and is regarded with some doubt by modern scholars (see McCormick).page 16, Sir John Vanbrugh The Playwright as Architect, Frank McCormick, 1991, Pennsylvania State University, After being released from the Bastille, he had to spend three months in Paris, free to move around but unable to leave the country, and with every opportunity to see an architecture "unparalleled in England for scale, ostentation, richness, taste and sophistication".Downes, p. 75. He was allowed to return to England in April 1693; once he returned to England he joined the Navy and took part in an unsuccessful naval attack against the French at Brest.Beard, p. 15. At some point in the mid-1690s, it is not known exactly when, he exchanged army life for London and the London stage.
Politically, the Club promoted the Whig objectives of a strong Parliament, a limited monarchy, resistance to France, and primarily the Protestant succession to the throne.Bryson p. 153 Yet the Kit-Cats always presented their club as more a matter of dining and conviviality, and this reputation has been successfully relayed to posterity. Downes suggests, however, that the Club's origins go back to before the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and that its political importance was much greater before it went public in 1700, in calmer and more Whiggish times. Downes proposes a role for an early Kit-Cat grouping in the armed invasion by William of Orange and the Glorious Revolution. Horace Walpole, son of Kit-Cat Sir Robert Walpole, claims that the respectable middle-aged Club members generally mentioned as "a set of wits" were originally "in reality the patriots that saved Britain", in other words were the active force behind the Glorious Revolution itself. Secret groups tend to be poorly documented, and this sketch of the pre-history of the Club cannot be proved but, as we have seen, young Vanbrugh was indeed in 1688 part of a secret network working for William's invasion. If the roots of the Club go back that far, it is tempting to speculate that Vanbrugh in joining the club was not merely becoming one of a convivial London "set of wits" but was also linking up with old friends and co-conspirators. A hero of the cause who had done time in French prison for it, could have been confident of a warm welcome.
Unsurprisingly under these circumstances, Vanbrugh's management of the Queen's Theatre in Haymarket showed "numerous signs of confusion, inefficiency, missed opportunities, and bad judgment".Milhous, p. 194 Having burned his fingers on theatre management, Vanbrugh too extricated himself, expensively, by selling the business in 1708 to Owen Swiny.,Nalbach, p. 10 though without ever collecting much of the putative price. He had put a lot of money, his own and borrowed, into the theatre company, which he was never to recover. It was noted as remarkable by contemporaries that he continued to pay the actors' salaries fully and promptly while they were working for him, just as he always paid the workmen he had hired for construction work; shirking such responsibilities was close to being standard practice in early 18th century England. Vanbrugh himself never seems to have pursued those who owed him money, and throughout his life his finances can at best be described as precarious.
Vanbrugh died "of an asthma" on 26 March 1726, in the modest town house designed by him in 1703 out of the ruins of Whitehall Palace and satirised by Jonathan Swift as "the Goose-pie House".Williams, p.109 His married life, however, was mostly spent at Greenwich (then not considered part of London at all) in the house on Maze Hill now known as Vanbrugh Castle, a miniature Scottish tower house designed by Vanbrugh in the earliest stages of his career. A Grade I listed building, and formerly a RAF Boys' School, it is today divided into private apartments.
Cibber, an inconspicuous young actor still employed by the parent company, seized this moment of unique demand for new plays and launched his career on two fronts by writing a play with a big, flamboyant part for himself: the Frenchified fop Sir Novelty Fashion. Backed up by Cibber's own uninhibited performance, Sir Novelty delighted the audiences. In the serious part of Love's Last Shift, wifely patience is tried by an out-of-control Restoration rake husband, and the perfect wife is celebrated and rewarded in a climactic finale where the cheating husband kneels to her and expresses the depth of his repentance.
Love's Last Shift has not been staged again since the early 18th century and is read only by the most dedicated scholars, who sometimes express distaste for its businesslike combination of four explicit acts of sex and rakishness with one of sententious reform (see Hume). If Cibber indeed was deliberately attempting to appeal simultaneously to rakish and respectable Londoners, it worked: the play was a great box-office hit.
Sequel: The Relapse Vanbrugh's witty sequel The Relapse, Or, Virtue in Danger, offered to the United Company six weeks later, questions the justice of women's position in marriage at this time. He sends new sexual temptations in the way of not only the reformed husband but also the patient wife, and allows them to react in more credible and less predictable ways than in their original context, lending the flat characters from Love's Last Shift a dimension that at least some critics are willing to consider psychology (see Hume ).
In a trickster subplot, Vanbrugh provides the more traditional Restoration attraction of an overly well-dressed and exquisite fop, Lord Foppington, a brilliant re-creation of Cibber's Sir Novelty Fashion in Love's Last Shift (Sir Novelty has simply in The Relapse bought himself the title of "Lord Foppington" through the corrupt system of Royal title sales). Critics of Restoration comedy are unanimous in declaring Lord Foppington "the greatest of all Restoration fops" (Dobrée), by virtue of being not merely laughably affected, but also "brutal, evil, and smart" (Hume ).
The Relapse, however, came very close to not being performed at all. The United Company had lost all its senior performers, and had great difficulty in finding and keeping actors of sufficient skills for the large cast required by The Relapse. Members of that cast had to be kept from defecting to the rival actors' cooperative, had to be "seduced" (as the legal term was) back when they did defect, and had to be blandished into attending rehearsals which dragged out into ten months and brought the company to the threshold of bankruptcy. "They have no company at all", reported a contemporary letter on 19 November 1696 "and unless a new play comes out on Saturday revives their reputation, they must break". That new play, The Relapse, did turn out a tremendous success that saved the company, not least by virtue of Colley Cibber again bringing down the house with his second impersonation of Lord Foppington. "This play (the Relapse)", writes Cibber in his autobiography forty years later, "from its new and easy Turn of Wit, had great Success".Lowe, p. 216.
The Provoked Wife is a comedy, but Elizabeth Barry who played the abused wife was especially famous as a tragic actress, and for her power of "moving the passions", i.e., moving an audience to pity and tears. Barry and the younger Bracegirdle had often worked together as a tragic/comic heroine pair to bring audiences the typically tragic/comic rollercoaster experience of Restoration plays. Vanbrugh takes advantage of this schema and these actresses to deepen audience sympathy for the unhappily married Lady Brute, even as she fires off her witty ripostes. In the intimate conversational dialogue between Lady Brute and her niece Bellinda (Bracegirdle), and especially in the star part of Sir John Brute the brutish husband (Betterton), which was hailed as one of the peaks of Thomas Betterton's remarkable career, The Provoked Wife is something as unusual as a Restoration problem play. The premise of the plot, that a wife trapped in an abusive marriage might consider either leaving it or taking a lover, outraged some sections of Restoration society.
Although Vanbrugh continued to work for the stage in many ways, he produced no more original plays. With the change in audience taste away from Restoration comedy, he turned his creative energies from original composition to dramatic adaptation/translation, theatre management, and architecture.
Jonathan Swift, in this quote, suggests that Vanbrugh had no previous training in, nor studied architecture, but applied himself to the discipline whole-heartedly.
As an architect (or surveyor, as the term then was) Vanbrugh is thought to have had no formal training (see "Early life" above). To what extent Vanbrugh's exposure to contemporary French architecture during years of imprisonment in France affected him is hard to gauge, in April 1691page 6, Sir John Vanbrugh Storyteller in Stone, Vaughan Hart, 2008, Yale University Press, he was transferred to Château de Vincennes in the months he spent as a prisoner there he would have got to know the architect Louis Le Vau's grand classical work (1656–61) in the château well. On his release from prison (he was at the Bastille by then) on 22 November 1692 he spent a short time in Paris,page 7, Sir John Vanbrugh Storyteller in Stone, Vaughan Hart, 2008, Yale University Press, there he would have seen much recent architecture including Les Invalides, the Collège des Quatre-Nations and the east wing of the Louvre Palace. His inexperience was compensated for by his unerring eye for perspective and detail and his close working relationship with Nicholas Hawksmoor. Hawksmoor, a former clerk of Sir Christopher Wren, was to be Vanbrugh's collaborator in many of his most ambitious projects, including Castle Howard and Blenheim. During his almost thirty years as a practising architect, Vanbrugh designed and worked on numerous buildings. More often than not his work was a rebuild or remodel, such as that of Kimbolton Castle, where Vanbrugh had to follow the instructions of his patron. Consequently these houses, which often claim Vanbrugh as their architect, do not best display his own architectural concepts and ideas. In the summer of 1699 as part of his architectural education Vanbrugh made a tour of northern England, writing to Charles Montagu, 1st Duke of Manchester, (he was still an Earl at the time) on Christmas Day of that year: 'I have seen most of the great houses in the North, as Ld Nottings (sic): Duke of Leeds Chattesworth (sic) &C.'page 48, Sir John Vanbrugh Storyteller in Stone, Vaughan Hart, 2008, Yale university Press, This itinerary likely included many of the great Elizabethan houses, including: Burghley House, Wollaton Hall, Hardwick Hall and Bolsover Castle, whose use of towers, complex skylines, bow widows and other features would be reinterpreted in Vanbrugh's own buildings.
Though Vanbrugh is best known in connection with stately houses, the parlous state of London's 18th-century streets did not escape his attention. It was reported in the London Journal of 16 March 1722–23:
Vanbrugh's chosen style was the baroque, which had been spreading across Europe during the 17th century, promoted by, among others, Bernini and Le Vau. The first baroque country house built in England was Chatsworth House, designed by William Talman three years before Castle Howard. In the contest for the commission of Castle Howard, the untrained and untried Vanbrugh astonishingly managed to out-charm and out-clubman the professional but less socially adept Talman and to persuade the Earl of Carlisle to give the great opportunity to him instead.Downes, pp. 193–204. Seizing it, Vanbrugh instigated European baroque's metamorphosis into a subtle, almost understated version that became known as English baroque. Four of Vanbrugh's designs act as milestones for evaluating this process:
Work on each of these projects overlapped with that on the next, providing a natural progression of thoughts and style.
Castle Howard, with its immense corridors in segmental leading from the main entrance block to the flanking wings, its centre crowned by a great domed tower complete with cupola, is very much in the school of classic European baroque. It combined aspects of design that had only appeared occasionally, if at all, in English architecture: John Webb's Greenwich Palace, Wren's unexecuted design for Greenwich, which like Castle Howard was dominated by a domed centre block, and of course Talman's Chatsworth. A possible inspiration for Castle Howard was also Vaux-le-Vicomte in France.
The interiors are extremely dramatic, the Great Hall rising 80 feet (24 m) into the cupola. Scagliola, and Corinthian order abound, and galleries linked by soaring arches give the impression of an opera stage-set – doubtless the intention of the architect.
Castle Howard was acclaimed a success. This fantastical building, unparalleled in England, with its facades and roofs decorated by pilasters, statuary, and flowing ornamental carving, ensured that baroque became an overnight success. While the greater part of Castle Howard was inhabited and completed by 1709, the finishing touches were to continue for much of Vanbrugh's lifetime. The west wing was finally completed after Vanbrugh's death, to an altered design. The acclaim of the work at Castle Howard led to Vanbrugh's most famous commission, architect for Blenheim Palace.
Regarding the commission, William Talman, an already established architect and Comptroller of the King's Works had initially been the architect of choice, charging more than the Lord had thought reasonable. Vanbrugh's charm, and Talman's lack thereof, may have been enough to convince the patron to change his architect. However, it remains unknown how Vanbrugh, totally untrained and inexperienced, persuaded Earl Carlisle to grant the responsibility of architect to him. The design process began in the summer of 1699, before the end of the year the model for Castle Howard was under construction, stone was being quarried and foundations discussed.
It appears that the early drawings of the design for Castle Howard were made by Nicholas Hawksmoor, and in 1700 he was formally introduced by Vanbrugh into the project as draughtsman and clerk of works. Designs varied and evolved until 1702, the pair working together.
The house was demolished in 1898 to make way for the Old War Office Building.
Blenheim Palace was conceived to be not only a grand country house, but a national monument.Sherwood and Pevsner, pp. 459–60. Consequently, the light baroque style used at Castle Howard would have been unsuitable for what is in effect a war memorial. It is in truth more of a castle, or citadel, than a palace. As it was designed as a national monument first and a comfortable family home second,Beard, p. 39. Vanbrugh had many arguments with the DuchessBryson p. 156 who wanted the Palace to be a comfortable country house for her family, I made Mr. Vanbrugh my enemy by the constant disputes I had with him to prevent his extravaganceColvin, p. 850. As a result of these arguments Vanbrugh resigned before the palace was completed in November 1716. You have your end Madam, for I will never trouble you more Unless the Duke of Marlborough recovers so far, to shelter me from such intolerable Treatment.
The qualities of the building are best illustrated by the massive East Gate ( illustration, below, left), set in the curtain wall of the service block, it has been described as resembling an impregnable entrance to a walled city.Green, p. 10. The gate, its tapering walls creating an illusion of greater height, also serves as water tower for the palace, thus confounding those of Vanbrugh's critics, such as the Duchess, who accused him of impracticability.
Blenheim, the largest non-royal domestic building in England, consists of three blocks, the centre containing the living and , and two flanking rectangular wings both built around a central courtyard: one contains the , and the other the kitchens, laundry, and storehouses. If Castle Howard was the first truly baroque building in England, then Blenheim Palace is the most definitive. While Castle Howard is a dramatic assembly of restless masses, Blenheim is altogether of a more solid construction, relying on tall slender windows and monumental statuary on the roofs to lighten the mass of yellow stone.
The suite of state rooms placed on the piano nobile were designed to be overpowering and magnificent displays, rather than warm, or comfortable. Cosy, middle class comfort was not the intention at Versailles, the great palace of Marlborough's foe, and it was certainly not deemed a consideration in the palace built to house the conqueror of Versailles' master.
As was common in the 18th century, personal comfort was sacrificed to perspective. Windows were to adorn the facades, as well as light the interior. Blenheim was designed as a theatre piece both externallySherwood and Pevsner, p. 466. and also from the 67 foot (20 m) high great hall, leading to the huge state room, all designed on an axis with the 134 foot (41 m) high column of victory in the grounds, with the trees planted in the battle positions of Marlborough's soldiers. Over the south portico ( illustrated right), itself a massive and dense construction of piers and columns, definitely not designed in the Palladian manner for elegant protection from the sun, a huge bust of Louis XIV is forced to look down on the splendours and rewards of his conqueror. Whether this placement and design was an ornamental feature created by Vanbrugh, or an ironic joke by Marlborough, is not known.Sherwood and Pevsner describe it as set there by Marlborough "like a head on a stake": their quotation marks, and suggesting, although not directly stating, that the description was Marlborough's own. Oxfordshire, pp. 459–60. However, as an architectural composition it is a unique example of baroque ornament. At Blenheim, Vanbrugh developed baroque from the mere ornamental to a denser, more solid, form, where the massed stone became the ornament. The great arched gates and the huge solid portico were ornament in themselves, and the whole mass was considered rather than each facade. As the palace is still treated as an important part of English heritage, it became a World Heritage Site in 1987.
On 29 April Edward Southwell wrote in his journal at Kings Weston, "Upwards of 60 men preparing stones and digging the foundation of the new house," and on 16 June 1712 work formally began on building the new house by John Vanbrugh. His client, Edward Southwell, did not desire a house on a monumental scale. The result was one of Vanbrugh's smaller houses. It is also his severest in style, obtaining high architectural drama by the well judged disposition of elements that are few in number, and simple in their nature. The exterior of the house would have been at the point of completion in 1717, the date on the contract for one of the parapet vases. The interior would have been virtually complete by 1719, when the design for inlay on the stair landings was drawn up. Two of the façades have since been remodelled, by Robert Mylne, who remodelled the interior in the 1760s. The stone, which was quarried on the site, was originally ochre in colour but has weathered to an orange-pink.
The arcade formed by linking the chimneys, which rises above the roof, is a notable external feature of the building, reminiscent of the belvederes of Blenheim Palace and producing a 'castle air'.18 It is square in shape and open on the northeast. The current structure is the result of a rebuilding in 1968, using Bath Stone.
The entrance front, on the southwest, has a centre containing six Corinthian pilasters, with those at each side paired to produce three bays, each of which contains a round arched window. The pediment has a central lunette, and each side consists of two bays in which the windows have wide flat surrounds. There are four parapet vases. The steps originally had low flank walls perpendicular to the facade, which were removed in the later remodelling.
On the southeast facade, the centre has a Doric temple front with open pediment, which surrounds the doorway. The centre has an attic as its upper storey, topped by a blocking course with scrolled supports at each end. A design with a pediment was prepared for this front, but is thought never to have been built. Though the only decoration is the rustication on the Doric temple's pilasters, a remarkably rich effect is achieved.
The northeast and northwest facades of Vanbrugh's original design were entirely undecorated, and a consequent lack of popular appeal may be the reason why they were largely destroyed in later remodelling.
Vanbrugh's northwest facade consisted of a single flat surface, in which a Venetian window on each floor filled the central space between two shallow projections. Perhaps to improve the view down to Avonmouth, the centre was remodelled by Mylne with a canted bay window, at odds with the tautness of Vanbrugh's overall design of the house, in which all planes were parallel or perpendicular to the walls. On the northeast the wall was moved forward during nineteenth-century remodelling, destroying an aesthetically significant alignment between wall projections and the break in the roof arcade, which had been present in Vanbrugh's design.
Built between 1718 and 1728 for Admiral George Delaval, it replaced the existing house on the site. It is possible that the design of Seaton Delaval was influenced by Palladio's Villa Foscari (sometimes known as "La Malcontenta"), built circa 1555. Both have rusticated facades and similar demilune windows over a non-porticoed entrance. Even the large attic gable at Villa Foscari hints at the clerestory of Seaton's great hall. The design concept Vanbrugh drew up was similar to that employed at Castle Howard and Blenheim: a corps de logis between two flanking wings. At Seaton Delaval the wings have a centre projection of three bays, crowned by pediment, either side of which are 7 bays of sash windows above a ground floor arcade. However, Seaton Delaval was to be on a much smaller scale. Work began in 1718 and continued for ten years. The building is an advancement on the style of Blenheim, rather than the earlier Castle Howard. The principal block, or corps de logis, containing, as at Blenheim and Castle Howard, the principal state and living room, forms the centre of a three-sided court. Towers crowned by Baluster and give the house something of what Vanbrugh called his castle air.
Seaton Delaval is one of the few houses Vanbrugh designed alone without the aid of Nicholas Hawksmoor. The sobriety of their joint work has sometimes been attributed to Hawksmoor, and yet Seaton Delaval is a very sombre house indeed. Whereas Castle Howard could successfully be set down in Dresden or Würzburg, the austerity and solidity of Seaton Delaval firmly belongs in Northumberland landscape. Vanbrugh, in the final stage in his career, was fully liberated from the rules of the architects of a generation earlier. The rustic stonework is used for the entire facade, including on the entrance facade, the pairs of twin columns supporting little more than a stone cornice. The twin columns are severe and utilitarian, and yet ornament, as they provide no structural use. This is part of the furtive quality of the baroque of Seaton Delaval: the ornamental appears as a display of strength and mass.
The likewise severe, but perfectly proportioned, garden facade has at its centre a four-columned, balcony-roofed portico. Here the slight fluting of the stone columns seems almost excessive ornament. As at Blenheim, the central block is dominated by the raised clerestory of the great hall, adding to the drama of the building's silhouette, but unlike Vanbrugh's other great houses, no statuary decorates the roof-scape here. The decoration is provided solely by a simple balustrade hiding the roof line, and chimneys disguised as to the balustrading of the low towers. The massing of the stone, the of the flanking wings, the heavy stonework and intricate recesses all create light and shade which is ornament in itself.
Among architects, only Vanbrugh could have taken for his inspiration one of Palladio's masterpieces, and while retaining the humanist values of the building, alter and adapt it, into a unique form of baroque unseen elsewhere in Europe.
Vanbrugh's reputation still suffers from accusations of extravagance, impracticability and a bombastic imposition of his own will on his clients. Ironically, all of these unfounded charges derive from Blenheim – Vanbrugh's selection as architect of Blenheim was never completely popular. The Duchess, the formidable Sarah Churchill, particularly wanted Sir Christopher Wren. However, eventually a warrant signed by the Earl of Godolphin, the parliamentary treasurer, appointed Vanbrugh, and outlined his remit. Sadly, nowhere did this warrant mention Queen, or Crown. This error provided the get-out clause for the state when the costs and political infighting escalated.
Though Parliament had voted funds for the building of Blenheim, no exact sum had ever been fixed upon, and certainly no provision had been made for inflation. Almost from the outset, funds had been intermittent. Queen Anne paid some of them, but with growing reluctance and lapses, following her frequent altercations with her one time best friend, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. After the Duchess's final argument with the Queen in 1712, all state money ceased and work came to a halt. £220,000 had already been spent and £45,000 was owing to workmen. The Marlboroughs went into exile on the continent, and did not return until after Queen Anne's death in 1714.
The day after the Queen's death the Marlboroughs returned, and were reinstated in favour at the court of the new King George I. The 64-year-old Duke now decided to complete the project at his own expense; in 1716 work restarted and Vanbrugh was left to rely entirely upon the means of the Duke of Marlborough himself. Already discouraged and upset by the reception the palace was receiving from the Whig factions, the final blow for Vanbrugh came when the Duke was incapacitated in 1717 by a severe stroke, and the thrifty (and hostile) Duchess took control. The Duchess blamed Vanbrugh entirely for the growing extravagance of the palace, and its general design: that her husband and government had approved them, she discounted. (In fairness to her, it must be mentioned that the Duke of Marlborough had contributed £60,000 to the initial cost, which, supplemented by Parliament, should have built a monumental house.) Following a meeting with the Duchess, Vanbrugh left the building site in a rage, insisting that the new masons, carpenters and craftsmen were inferior to those he had employed. The master craftsmen he had patronised, however, such as Grinling Gibbons, refused to work for the lower rates paid by the Marlboroughs. The craftsmen brought in by the Duchess, under the guidance of furniture designer James Moore, completed the work in perfect imitation of the greater masters, so perhaps there was fault and intransigence on both sides in this famed argument.
Vanbrugh was deeply distressed by the turn of events. The rows and resulting rumours had damaged his reputation, and the palace he had nurtured like a child was forbidden to him. In 1719, while the duchess was "not at home", Vanbrugh was able to view the palace in secret; but when he and his wife, with the Earl of Carlisle, visited the completed Blenheim as members of the viewing public in 1725, they were refused admission to even enter the park.Beard, p. 50. The palace had been completed by Nicholas Hawksmoor.
That Vanbrugh's work at Blenheim has been the subject of criticism can largely be blamed on those, including the Duchess, who failed to understand the chief reason for its construction: to celebrate a martial triumph. In the achievement of this remit, Vanbrugh was as triumphant as was Marlborough on the field of battle.
After Vanbrugh's death Abel Evans suggested this as his epitaph:
Under this stone, reader, survey
Dead Sir John Vanbrugh's house of clay.
Lie heavy on him, Earth! For he
Laid many heavy loads on thee!
Vanbrugh was buried in the church of St Stephen Walbrook in the City of London, but his grave is unmarked and the above epitaph is as yet unused.
Throughout the Georgian period reaction to Vanbrugh's architecture varied. Voltaire, who visited Blenheim Palace in the autumn of 1727, described it as 'a great mass of stone with neither charm nor taste' and thought that if the apartments 'were but as spacious as the walls thick, the house would be commodious enough'.Desmond Flower(ed), Voltaire's England (The Folio Society, 1950), p.160.
In a letter dated 10 March 1740,Appendix M, page 275, Vanbrugh, Kerry Downes, 1977, A. Zwemmer Ltd, the German Jacob Friedrich, Baron Bielfeld had this to say about Vanbrugh:
This building (Blenheim) has been severely censured, and I agree that it is not entirely exempt from rational censure as it is too much loaded with columns and other heavy ornaments. But if we consider that Sir John Vanbrugh was to construct a building of endless duration, that no bounds were set to expense, and that an edifice was required that should strike with awe and surprise even at a distance; the architect may be excused for having sacrificed, in some degree, the elegance of design to multiplicity of ornament. All the several parts are moreover exactly calculated, all the rules of art are well observed, and this immense fabric reminds us, on the first glance, of the majesty and state of those of Greece and ancient Rome. When we behold it a distance, it appears not as a single palace, but as an entire city. We arrive at it by a stately bridge of a single arch, and which is itself a masterpiece of architecture. I have contracted a very intimate friend ship with the son of Sir John Vanbrugh, who has lately obtained a company in the foot guards, and is a young gentleman of real merit. He has shown me, not only all the designs of his father, but also two houses of his building, one near Whitehall, and the other at Greenwich. They are indeed mere models of houses, but notwithstanding their confined situation, there are everywhere traces of a master to be discovered in their execution. The vulgar critic finds too many columns and ornaments; but the true connoisseur sees that all these ornaments are accompanied with utility, and that an inventive genius is visible in every part. This architect was likewise author of several comedies, which are indeed written in a style that is rather licentious, but at the same time are resplendent with wit and vivacity. So true it is, that genius is not confined to one subject, but wherever exercised, is equally manifest.
In 1766 Lord Stanhope described the Roman amphitheatre at Nîmes as 'Ugly and clumsy enough to have been the work of Vanbrugh if it had been in England.'4th Earl of Chesterfield to his son: Letters ed. B. Dobree, VI 1932, p2786 In 1772 Horace Walpole described Castle Howard thus:
Nobody had informed me that I should at one view see a palace, a town, a fortified city, temples on high places, woods worthy of being each a metropolis of the Druids, vales connected to hills by other woods, the noblest lawn in the world fenced by half the horizon, and a mausoleum that would tempt one to be buried alive; in short I have seen gigantic places before, but never a sublime one.'Walpole's Letter to George Selwyn; The Letters ed. Mrs Paget Toynbee, VIII, 1904 p. 193
Walpole was not as complimentary of Blenheim, describing it as 'execrable within, without & almost all round' and went on 'a quarry of stone that looked at a distance like a great house'.Walpole's letter to George Montagu, 20 May 1736; The Letters ed. Peter Cunningham, I, 1906 p. 6 In 1773 Robert Adam and James Adam in the preface to their Works in Architecture wrote that:
Sir John Vanbrugh's genius was of the first class; and, in point of movement, novelty and ingenuity, his works have not been exceeded by anything in modern times. We should certainly quote Blenheim and Castle Howard as great examples of these perfections in preference to any work of our own, or of any other modern architect; but unluckily for the reputation of this excellent artist, his taste kept no pace with his genius, and his works are so crowded with barbarisms and absurdities, and so born down by their own preposterous weight, that none but the discerning can separate their merits from their defects. In the hands of the ingenious artist, who knows how to polish and refine and bring them into use, we have always regarded his productions as rough jewels of inestimable value'.Adam and Adam Works in Architecture p 1 footnote 1 (1773)
In 1786 Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote in his 13th Discourse '...in the buildings of Vanbrugh, who was a poet as well as an architect, there is a greater display of imagination, than we shall find perhaps in any other.' In 1796 Uvedale Price described Blenheim as 'uniting in one building the beauty and magnificence of Grecian architecture, the picturesqueness of the Gothic, and the massive grandeur of a castle.'Price, Essays on the Picturesque (1798) II, p. 252 In his fifth Royal Academy lecture of 1810, Sir John Soane said that 'By studying his works the artist will acquire a bold flight of irregular fancy',David Watkin, Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; ), p. 338, quoting Sir John Soane's Museum Architectural Library, Soane Case 153, Lecture, V, January 1810, folios 50–51 calling him 'the Shakespeare of architects'.Watkin, Sir John Soane, p. 337, quoting Sir John Soane's Museum Architectural Library, Soane Case 153, Lecture, V, January 1810, folio 52 Sir Robert Smirke was less complimentary 'Heaviness was the lightest of (Vanbrugh's) faults... The Italian style...which he contrived to caricature...is apparent in all his works; he helped himself liberally to its vices, contributed many of his own, and by an unfortunate misfortune adding impurity to that which was already greatly impure, left it disgusting and often odious'.p753, The Dictionary of Biographical Quotations, Justin Wintle & Richard Kenin (eds), 1978, Routledge & K. Paul Charles Robert Cockerell had this to say about Castle Howard: "great play & charm in Hall. I could not leave it. Vast effect, movement in staircases &c. good effect of long passages on entering."page 59, The Life and Work of C.R. Cockerell, David Watkin, 1974, A. Zewemmer Ltd,
On the 18th-century stage, Vanbrugh's Relapse and Provoked Wife were only considered possible to perform in bowdlerised versions, but as such, they remained popular. Throughout Colley Cibber's long and successful acting career, audiences continued to demand to see him as Lord Foppington in The Relapse, while Sir John Brute in The Provoked Wife became, after being an iconic role for Thomas Betterton, one of David Garrick's most famous roles.
With the completion of Castle Howard, English baroque came into fashion overnight. It had brought together the isolated and varied instances of monumental design, by, among others, Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren. Vanbrugh thought of masses, volume and perspective in a way that his predecessors had not.
He was adept at delivering buildings for his clients, that successfully met their requirements. His reputation has suffered because of his famed disagreements with the Duchess of Marlborough, yet, one must remember his original client was the British Nation, not the Duchess, and the nation wanted a monument and celebration of victory, and that is what Vanbrugh gave the nation.
Nicholas Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh's friend and collaborator on so many projects continued to design many London churches for ten years after Vanbrugh's death. Vanbrugh's pupil and cousin the architect Edward Lovett Pearce rose to become one of Ireland's greatest architects. His influence in Yorkshire can also be seen in the work of the amateur architect William Wakefield, who designed several buildings in the county that show Vanbrugh's influence.
Vanbrugh is commemorated throughout Britain, by inns, street names, a university college (York) and schools named in his honour.Mallgrave 2005, p. 47. His architectural works have been described as "the architectural equivalent of the heroic play, theatrical, grandiose, a dramatic grouping of restless masses with little reference to function."Halliday, p. 187.
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