Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T19:29:58.409Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Anglo-Indian Architect Walter Sykes George (1881–1962): a Modernist Follower of Lutyens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Richard Butler
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

[Lutyens’s system of proportion] began the link between us, by a chance action of mine, within the first year of my meeting him. He would never discuss it. It was intensely personal to him. [… He once] spoke to a group of students. One asked ‘What is proportion?’ and he answered ‘God’.

(Walter Sykes George to Hope Bagenal, January 1959)

Walter Sykes George (1881–1962) (Fig. 1) was a remarkable Anglo-Indian architect. Obituaries in Indian and British journals cast him as a ‘Renaissance’ man: an artist, Byzantine archaeologist, architect, town planner, philosopher, historian, public intellectual, humanist, Modernist, even an Indian nationalist. He features prominently in one recent history of modern architecture in India, a rare accolade for an ‘Anglo-Indian’ architect — an architect born in Britain who practised and lived for much of his life in India.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 55 , 2012 , pp. 237 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 London, RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (Victoria and Albert Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, p. 1: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 14 January 1959.

2 London, RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George Biographical File, Fernandes, J. B., ‘Obituary: Walter George’, p. 1 Google Scholar, and Manickam, T. J., ‘Obituary: Walter Sykes George’, p. 1.Google Scholar Also, Anon., ‘Obituary: Walter Sykes George’, Urban and Rural Planning Thought (February 1962), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

3 Khanna, Rahul, The Modern Architecture of New Delhi (Noida, 2008), pp. 20–27 Google Scholar; Stamp, Gavin, ‘Indian Summer’, Architectural Review, 159 (June 1976), pp. 365–66Google Scholar; Stamp, Gavin, ‘British Architecture in India’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 129 (May 1981), p. 376 Google Scholar; Stamp, Gavin, ‘India: End of the Classical Tradition’, Lotus International, 34 (1982), pp. 80–81 Google Scholar; Stamp, Gavin, ‘Lutyens, India, and the Future of Architecture’, Lutyens Abroad, ed. Hopkins, Andrew and Stamp, Gavin (London, 2002), pp. 195–96.Google Scholar

4 Davies, Philip, Splendours of the Raj (London, 1985), pp. 235, 236 and 241.Google Scholar

5 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, p. 2; and Byron, Robert, ‘New Delhi’, Architectural Review, 69 (January 1931), p. 13.Google Scholar

6 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Walter George papers, GeW/1/9, p. 1: Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 March 1952.

7 Stamp, , Lutyens Abroad, p. 191.Google Scholar

8 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, p. 1: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959. RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George Biographical File, Admission Statement as a Fellow of the RIBA, 7 February 1929.

9 See Cormack, Robin, The Church of Saint Demetrios in Thessaloniki: the Watercolours and Drawings of W.S. Georg (Thessaloniki, 1985)Google Scholar and Scholars, Travels, Archives: Greek History and Culture Through the British School at Athens, ed. Smith, Michael Llewellyn, Kitromilides, Paschalis M. and Calligas, Eleni (Athens, 2009), pp. 135–43.Google Scholar

10 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), PB361/19: ‘Afterglow: the Acropolis, Athens’. The mezzotint was given to the RIBA by Shearer in 1985; see Johnson, Jane and Greutzner, Alan, The Dictionary of British Artists (Woodbridge, 1976), p. 196.Google Scholar

11 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Walter George papers, GeW/1/9, p. 3: George to Shearer, 14 March 1952.

12 See George, Walter, The Church of Saint Eirene at Constantinople (London, 1912).Google Scholar

13 A. L. P., , ‘Review’, The Burlington Magazine, 23.122 (May 1913), p. 116.Google Scholar

14 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Walter George papers, GeW/1/9, p. 6: George to Shearer, 14 March 1952.

15 Pevsner, Nikolaus, Nairn, Ian and Cherry, Bridget, The Buildings of England: Surrey (Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 520.Google Scholar

16 Ibid.

17 Newton, William Godfrey, The Work of Ernest Newton, R.A., Containing a List of His Works (London, 1925), pp. 186–87.Google Scholar

18 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Walter George papers, GeW/4, ‘Specifications of works for twelve cottages, of three types, to be erected at Whiteley Park, Burhill, Surrey’, June 1914.

19 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, p. 1.

20 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, RIBA Admissions Statement. George refers to himself as Baker’s ‘Resident Architect’. Baker for his part does not mention any of his Delhi representatives in his autobiography, but in the Herbert Baker Papers at the RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum) there is a letter in which he refers to George as ‘my representative whom I leave behind’; see BaH/2/1/13, fol. ii: Baker to Sir Malcolm Hailey, 18 March 1916. See also Herbert Baker Papers, BaH/2/2/53, fol. ix, ‘Memorandum of my relations with Lutyens and Delhi written on the S.S. “Viceroy of India”, Feb-March 1931’.

21 Fernandes, J. B., ‘Obituary: Walter George’, Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects, 27.3 (July-September 1961), p. 3.Google Scholar

22 Stamp, , ‘End of the Classical Tradition’, pp. 75–77.Google Scholar

23 Stamp, , ‘Indian Summer’, pp. 367–69.Google Scholar

24 Stamp, ‘End of the Classical Tradition’, p. 69. In the Lutyens Papers at the RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), there are some letters from Lutyens to Lady Emily Lutyens in which George is mentioned. Two are relevant here. In the first, Lutyens mentions dining with ‘Hall, Greaves, W.S. George and Walpole’, those who were ‘in the office’, on a Saturday evening in December 1917; see LuE /16 /1 /1, fol. iii: Lutyens to Lady Emily, 3 January 1917. The second is an endearing description of his forty-eighth birthday later in 1917 in which he writes that ‘the office boys George, Greaves, Walgate, Hall, Brandon [and] Blomfield’ dressed up in suits and top hats and sang him songs. ‘Glees and jollies’, he writes, ‘44 of us sat down to dinner. I had a cake with 48 candles. The night was lovely, warm and a new moon sky high’; see Lutyens Papers, LuE/16/3/5, fol. vi: Edwin Lutyens to Lady Emily, 1 April 1917.

25 Baker, Herbert, Architecture and Personalities (London, 1944), p. 36.Google Scholar

26 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, p. 1. For their later careers, see Stamp, , ‘Indian Summer’, p. 372 Google Scholar, and Stamp, , Lutyens Abroad, p. 200.Google Scholar

27 Forster, Edward Morgan, A Passage to India (Harmondsworth, 1961), p. 111.Google Scholar

28 Scott, Geoffrey, The Architecture of Humanism (London, 1914).Google Scholar

29 Byron, , ‘New Delhi’, p. 6 and pl. VII.Google Scholar

30 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, p. 2: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959.

31 Bowe, Patrick, ‘“The Genius of an Artist”’, Garden History, 37.1 (Summer 2009), p. 68.Google Scholar

32 George, Walter, ‘The Roadside Planting of Lutyens’ New Delhi’, Urban and Rural Planning Thought (April 1958), p. 84 Google Scholar; Bowe, , ‘“The Genius of an Artist”’, p. 71 Google Scholar; and Amery, Colin in Lutyens, ed. Amery, Colin et al. (London, 1981), p. 174 Google Scholar. While it might be expected that Lutyens would have worked with his assistant Shoosmith, and not George, the roadside planting work had been underway for more than a year by the time the former arrived in Delhi.

33 Bowe, , ‘“The Genius of an Artist”’, p. 71.Google Scholar

34 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, RIBA Admissions Statement.

35 Medd, Henry, ‘Obituary: Walter Sykes George’, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 69 (March 1962), p. 102.Google Scholar

36 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, RIBA Admissions Statement; Medd, , ‘Obituary’, p. 102.Google Scholar

37 Ibid.

38 Byron, , ‘New Delhi’, p. 18.Google Scholar

39 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, p. 2.

40 Ibid.

41 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, p. 2: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959; Gradidge, Roger, Lutyens Abroad, p. 158 Google Scholar, Lutyens, Mary, Edwin Lutyens (London, 1980), p. 189 Google Scholar; and Stamp, Gavin, ‘Edwin Lutyens’, in the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, ed. Placzek, Adolph (London, 1982), p. 46.Google Scholar

42 Hussey, Christopher, The Life of Sir Edwin Lutyens (London, 1953), p. 462.Google Scholar

43 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, p. 2: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959.

44 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, pp. 1–2: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 14 January 1959.

45 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Walter George papers, GeW/1/9, pp. 3–4: George to Shearer, 14 March 1952; and Wittkower, Rudolf, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 5th edn (Chichester, 1998), pp. 145–47.Google Scholar

46 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, p. 1.

47 Stamp, , ‘Sir Edwin Lutyens’, p. 47 Google Scholar, and George, , ‘The Roadside Planting of Lutyens’ New Delhi’, p. 81.Google Scholar

48 Stamp, , ‘Indian Summer’, pp. 368 and 371.Google Scholar

49 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, p. 9: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959. His use of ‘aniconic’ is unusual — meaning perhaps an absence of ornamentation.

50 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, RIBA Admissions Statement.

51 Byron, , ‘New Delhi’, pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

52 Not to be confused with the 1919 and 1922 designs by Lutyens for a house for the Maharajah of Kashmir (both unexecuted). See RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Edwin Lutyens papers, LuE/18/5/4: Lutyens to Lady Emily, 20 February 1922; and Stamp, Lutyens, Hayward Gallery cat., p. 181. Prithviraj was a twelfth-century Hindu king.

53 George, Walter, ‘The Architecture of Walter George’, Design (Bombay) (September 1960), p. 21.Google Scholar

54 Ibid., p. 20.

55 Bahga, Sarbjit, Bahga, Surinder and Bahga, Yashinder, Modern Architecture in India (New Delhi, 1993), p. 7.Google Scholar

56 George, , ‘The Architecture of Walter George’, p. 21.Google Scholar

57 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Edwin Lutyens papers, LuE/19/12/7, fols ii and iii: Lutyens to Lady Emily, 14 February 1929.

58 George, , ‘The Architecture of Walter George’, p. 20.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., p. 21.

60 Ibid. George may have been referring to Wright’s Robie House, Illinois (c. 1909).

61 George, Walter, ‘Indian Architecture: The Prospect Before Us’, Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects, 17.1 (January-March 1951), p. 4.Google Scholar

62 Irving, Robert Grant, Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker, and Imperial Delhi (New Haven and London, 1981), fig. 197.Google Scholar

63 George, , ‘The Architecture of Walter George’, p. 21.Google Scholar

64 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, p. 2.

65 Ashraf, Kazi Khaleed and Belluardo, James (eds), An Architecture of Independence: The Making of Modern South Asia (New York, 1998), p. 11.Google Scholar

66 Pevsner, Nikolaus, An Outline of European Architecture (Penguin, 1964), pp. 404–09Google Scholar; Sharp, Dennis, Twentieth Century Architecture (London, 1991), p. 114 Google Scholar; and Pehnt, Wolfgang, Expressionist Architecture (London, 1973), p. 198.Google Scholar

67 Sharp, , Twentieth Century Architecture, p. 112.Google Scholar

68 Pehnt, , Expressionist Architecture, p. 162.Google Scholar

69 Medd (‘Obituary’, p. 102) states that George designed two hospitals in Jodhpur: the earlier 1924 building (noted in his RIBA Admissions Statement) and the c. 1930 Umaid Hospital (here discussed). The Umed Club was founded in 1922 by the Maharajah of Jodhpur, and is still active today.

70 Rowland, Benjamin, The Art and Architecture of India (Penguin, 1953), pp. 132–34.Google Scholar

71 Stamp, in Lutyens, ed. Amery, , p. 184 Google Scholar. The building is not to be confused with Oscar Pereira’s St Thomas’s (1971–73) also in Delhi.

72 Stamp, Gavin, ‘Arthur Gordon Shoosmith’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Matthew, Colin and Harrison, Brian (Oxford, 2004), p. 415.Google Scholar

73 Irving, Indian Summer, p. 331.Google ScholarPubMed

74 Ibid., p. 334.

75 Bahga, Modern Architecture in India, p. 7 Google ScholarPubMed, and Lang, Jon, Desai, Madhavi and Desai, Miki, Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity. India 1880–1980 (Oxford, 1997), p. 159.Google Scholar

76 Jaitly, Ashok, St Stephen’s College (New Delhi, 2006), p. 36.Google Scholar

77 Khanna, , The Modern Architecture of New Delhi, p. 20 Google Scholar, and Stamp, , Lutyens Abroad, p. 196.Google Scholar

78 Jaitly, , St Stephen’s College, p. 35.Google Scholar

79 Ibid., pp. 20–21.

80 Monk, Francis Fitzhugh, A History of St Stephen’s College, Delhi (Calcutta, 1935), pp. 2, 112, 149, 228–29 and 240.Google Scholar

81 Jaitly, , St Stephen’s College, pp. 38 and 47.Google Scholar

82 Lang, Desai and Desai, , Architecture and Independence, p. 140.Google Scholar

83 Monk, , A History ofSt Stephen’s College, p. 39.Google Scholar

84 Ibid., pp. 46 and 239.

85 Metcalf, Thomas, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (London, 1989), p. 245.Google Scholar

86 Jaitly, , St Stephen’s College, pp. 36–37 Google Scholar, and Monk, , A History of St Stephen’s College, p. 184 Google Scholar. A plaque, inscribed ‘Allnutt Hostel 1922’, is now confusingly attached to part of George’s building. It must have been removed from the original hostel, which was a neo-Classical structure located elsewhere in the city.

87 George, , ‘Indian Architecture: the Prospect Before Us’, p. 4.Google Scholar

88 Jaitly, , St Stephen’s College, p. 5.Google Scholar

89 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, pp. 8–9: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959.

90 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, p. 2: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 14 January 1959.

91 George, , ‘The Architecture of Walter George’, p. 20.Google Scholar

92 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, pp. 4–5: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959.

93 George thought Lutyens’s style would stage a comeback; see RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, pp. 2–3: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959. Lutyens’s views were well known; see Lutyens, Edwin, ‘What I Think of Modern Architecture’, Country Life, 20 June 1931, pp. 775–77.Google Scholar

94 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, pp. 3–4 and 8: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959. George’s interpretation of Ruskin is questionable, of Keats less so, and of Pope mistaken; see Ruskin, John, Modern Painters (London, 1856), II, pp. 28–35 and III, p. 33Google Scholar; John, Keats, ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’, The Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. Garrod, H. W. (Oxford, 1939), p. 262 Google Scholar; and Pope, Alexander, ‘An Essay on Man to Lord Bolingbroke’, Epistle IV, 49, in Pope: Poetical Works, ed. Davis, H. (Oxford, 1966), p. 270 Google Scholar. Pope actually said that ‘order’ (not beauty) was ‘Heaven’s first law’.

95 RIB A Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Walter George papers, GeW/1/9, pp. 3–4: Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 March 1952. Le Corbusier, , Towards a New Architecture, trans. Etchells, Frederick (London, 1963), p. 125.Google Scholar

96 George, , ‘Indian Architecture: the Prospect Before Us’, p. 3.Google Scholar

97 Ibid., p. 4.

98 Sujan Singh was the father of Sobha Singh, for whom George had designed a house (Baikunth, no. 1) on Janpath road in Delhi (1934–35).

99 Khanna, , The Modern Architecture of New Delhi, p. 24.Google Scholar

100 Bahga, Sarbjit, Bahga, Surinder and Bahga, Yashinder, New Indian Homes: an Architectural Renaissance (New Delhi, 1997), p. 4.Google Scholar

101 Lang, Jon, A Concise History of Modern Architecture in India (Delhi, 2002), p. 33.Google Scholar

102 ‘Architecture of Delhi: From Housing Colonies to Apartment Blocks’, at www.delhi-architecture.weebly.com/housing-sector.html> (accessed on 3 April 2012).

103 Stamp, ‘End of the Classical Tradition’, p. 79.Google Scholar

104 Lang, Desai and Desai, , Architecture and Independence, p. 141.Google Scholar

105 Chaudhuri, D. N., ‘A Group Photograph’, Urban and Rural Planning Thought, 1.2 (April 1958).Google Scholar

106 George, , ‘The Roadside Planting of Lutyens’ New Delhi’, p. 90.Google Scholar

107 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, p. 1.

108 Ashraf, and Belluardo, , An Architecture of Independence, p. 11.Google Scholar

109 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, p. 2.

110 George, , ‘Indian Architecture: The Prospect Before Us’, p. 11 Google Scholar, and Anon., ‘Town Planning’, Civic Affairs, 6.4 (November 1958), p. 61.Google ScholarPubMed

111 Lang, A Concise History of Modern Architecture in India, p. 8 Google Scholar, and Christopher London, , Bombay Gothic (Mumbai, 2002), p. 20.Google Scholar

112 Anon., ‘Obituary’, Indian Architect, p. 35 Google ScholarPubMed; and RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Manickam, ’Obituary’, p. 1.

113 Anon., ‘Growth of Architectural Practice in India’, The Indian Architect, 11.1 (January 1969), p. 32.Google Scholar

114 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, pp. 1–2. RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, pp. 5–8: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959; Anon., ‘The Building of New Delhi’, The Times, 8 January 1962.

115 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, p. 1.

116 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo /1 / 3, pp. 6–7: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 January 1959.

117 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, p. 2: Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 14 January 1959.

118 Ibid., p. 1.

119 RIBA Prints and Drawings Room (V&A Museum), Hope Bagenal papers, BaHo/1/3, p. 1 Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 16 January 1959; and BaHo/1/3, pp. 1–2: Walter George to Malcolm Mac-Donald, 16 January 1959.

120 RIBA (Portland Place), Walter George papers, Fernandes, ‘Obituary’, p. 1.

121 Lang, , A Concise History of Modern Architecture in India, pp. 1–33.Google Scholar

122 Ibid.

123 Hussey, , The Life of Sir Edwin Lutyens, p. 462.Google Scholar

124 Jaitly, , St Stephen’s College, p. 39.Google Scholar

125 Anon., ‘Obituary’, Indian Architect, p. 35.Google ScholarPubMed

126 Stamp, ‘Indian Summer’, p. 371.Google Scholar

127 Evenson, Norma, The Indian Metropolis: A View Towards the West (New Haven and London, 1989), p. 224.Google Scholar

128 Ibid., pp. 229–30; Metcalf, , An Imperial Vision, p. 250.Google Scholar