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Designs on the City: John Gwynn's Plans for Georgian London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Miles Ogborn
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1: Transforming Metropolitan London, 1750–1960 , January 2004 , pp. 15 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2004

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References

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4 Ibid., pp. 364, 370.

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7 See the discussion in Ogborn, Miles and Withers, Charles W. J., “Introduction: Georgian Geographies?” in their Georgian Geographies: Essays on Space, Place and Landscape in the Eighteenth Century (Manchester, 2004)Google Scholar.

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17 Gwynn, London and Westminster Improved, p. v.

18 Ibid., Plate II.

19 Summerson, Georgian London.

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26 Ibid., pp. 88–89.

27 Gwynn, John, An Essay on Design: Including Proposals for Erecting a Public Academy to be Supported by Voluntary Subscription (till a Royal Foundation Can Be Obtain'd) for Educating the British Youth in Drawing, and the Several Arts Depending Thereon (London, 1749)Google Scholar.

28 Gwynn, London and Westminster Improved, p. 22.

29 Ibid., p. 31.

30 Gwynn, Essay on Design, p. ii and sig. A2r.

31 Ibid., p. 92.

32 Ibid., p. 17.

33 Ibid., pp. 19, 21, iii.

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37 Ibid., pp. 26, 21.

38 Ibid., p. 31.

39 A Plan of the City of London after the Great Fire in the Year of Our Lord 1666, with a Model of the New City, according to the Grand Design of Sir Christopher Wren Kt. (London, 1749)Google Scholar.

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41 Ibid.

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43 See Reddaway, Thomas F., The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire (London, 1940)Google Scholar; Wall, Cynthia, The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar.

44 Gwynn, London and Westminster Improved, p. vi.

45 Ibid., pp. v, 5, 7.

46 Ibid., p. ix.

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48 Gwynn, London and Westminster Improved, p. 5.

49 Ibid., p. xv.

50 Ibid., p. vii.

51 Carter, Philip, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society: Britain, 1660–1800 (Harlow, 2001)Google Scholar.

52 Gwynn, London and Westminster Improved, p. vi.

53 Ibid., p. 5.

54 The same point is made in [Stuart, James], Critical Observations on the Buildings and Improvements of London (London, 1771), pp. 23–29 Google Scholar.

55 Gwynn, London and Westminster Improved, p. 61.

56 Ibid., p. 1.

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58 Grieg, James, ed., The Farington Diary (London, 1922), p. 180 Google Scholar.

59 Gwynn (London and Westminster Improved, p. 67) also complained of “mere mechanical architects, totally ignorant in any branch of learning proper to lead them into the knowledge of design.”

60 Jenkins, Frank, Architect and Patron: A Survey of Professional Relations and Practice in England from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Crinson, Mark and Lubbock, Jules, Architecture: Art or Profession? Three Hundred Years of Architectural Education in Britain (Manchester, 1994)Google Scholar. On carpenters, see Ayres, James, Building the Georgian City (New Haven, Conn., 1998)Google Scholar.

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65 George II is quoted as saying, “I hate bainting and boetry too! Neither one nor the other ever did any good!” See Nichols, R. H. and Wray, F. A., The History of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1935), p. 259 Google Scholar. See also Whitley, William T., Artists and Their Friends in England, 1700–1799 (London, 1928)Google Scholar, for a discussion of Vertue's meetings with the prince of Wales.

66 See Kirby, Joshua, Dr. Brook Taylor's Method of Perspective Made Easy, Both in Theory and Practice (Ipswich, 1755)Google Scholar, whose list of subscribers identifies members of the academy; Girouard, “Hogarth and His Friends,” p. 190.

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77 An Account of the Ceremonies Observed at the Coronation of Our Most Gracious Sovereign George III and His Royal Consort Queen Charlotte, on Tuesday the 22d of September 1761 (London, 1761)Google Scholar. On Gwynn's involvement in the birthday celebrations, see “Papers of the Society of Artists,” p. 126.

78 Linda Colley, “The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation, 1760–1820,” Past and Present, no. 102 (1984): 94–129.

79 Solkin, Painting for Money.

80 Graves, The Society of Artists.

81 See the contrasting accounts in Edwards, Edward, Anecdotes of Painters Who Have Resided or Been Born in England (London, 1808)Google Scholar, and Pye, John, Patronage of British Art: An Historical Sketch (London, 1845)Google Scholar. For contemporary complaints, see The Conduct of the Royal Academicians, While Members of the Incorporated Society of Artists of Great Britain, viz., from the Year 1760, to their Expulsion in the Year 1769 (London, 1771)Google Scholar; Strange, Robert, An Inquiry into the Rise and Establishment of the Royal Academy of Arts (London, 1775)Google Scholar.

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84 Uglow, Jenny, Hogarth: A Life and a World (London, 1997), p. 672 Google Scholar; Paulson, Ronald, Hogarth, vol. 3, Art and Politics, 1750–1764 (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar.

85 Gwynn, London and Westminster Improved, pp. 2, xiii.

86 Lancaster, Nathaniel, The Plan of an Essay upon Delicacy (London, 1748)Google Scholar, endeavors to define “the true character of DELICACY” (p. 70), hedged around as it is with the dangers of “effeminacy” (p. 70) and “estrangement from human commerce” (p. 73). See also Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society.

87 Shawe-Taylor, Desmond, The Georgians: Eighteenth-Century Portraiture and Society (London, 1990)Google Scholar; Pointon, Marcia, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1993)Google Scholar; Baker, Malcolm, “Portrait Busts of Architects in Eighteenth-Century England,” in New Light on English Palladianism, ed. Hind, Charles (London, 1990), pp. 14–30 Google Scholar; and Jordanova, Ludmilla, “Medical Men, 1780–1820,” in Portraiture: Facing the Subject, ed. Woodall, Joanna (Manchester, 1997), pp. 101–15Google Scholar.

88 Compare, e.g., Gwynn's portrait with the direct gaze of Francis Price, the author of The British Carpenter (London, 1735)Google ScholarPubMed, in George Beare's 1747 portrait now in the National Portrait Gallery in London, or with the many representations of William Chambers.

89 Summerson, Georgian London, p. 122; Stillman, English Neo-Classical Architecture.

90 See the essays by David Gilbert and Frank Mort in this issue.

91 Harris, Sir William Chambers, and Stillman, English Neo-Classical Architecture.

92 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 364.