Nicholas Hawksmoor

The career of Nicholas Hawksmoor (probably 1661 - 25 March 1736) formed the brilliant middle link in Britain's trio of great baroque architects. Hawksmoor was characterized by Howard Colvin as "more assured in his command of the classical vocabulary than the untrained Vanbrugh, more imaginative in his vision than the intellectual Wren." From about 1684 to about 1700 Hawksmoor worked with his teacher, Christopher Wren, on projects including Chelsea Hospital, St. Paul's Cathedral (London), Hampton Court Palace and Greenwich Hospital. Thanks to Wren's influence as Surveyor-General, the modest and diffident Hawksmoor was named Clerk of the Works at Kensington Palace (1689) and Deputy Surveyor of Works at Greenwich (1705). In 1718, when Wren was superseded by the new, amateur Surveyor, William Benson, Hawksmoor was deprived of his double post to provide places for Benson's brother, a bitter blow. "Poor Hawksmoor," wrote Vanbrugh in 1721. "What a Barbarous Age... What wou'd Monsr. Colbert in France have given for such a man?"

Related Topics:
1661 - 25 March - 1736 - Britain's - Baroque - Architect - Vanbrugh - 1684 - 1700 - Christopher Wren - Chelsea Hospital - St. Paul's Cathedral - London - Hampton Court Palace - Greenwich Hospital - Kensington Palace - 1689 - Greenwich - 1705 - 1718 - William Benson - 1721 - Colbert

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He then worked for a time with Sir John Vanbrugh, helping him build Blenheim Palace for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, where he took charge after Vanbrugh's final break with the demanding Duchess of Marlborough, and Castle Howard for Charles Howard, later the 3rd Earl of Carlisle. There is no doubt that Hawksmoor brought to the brilliant amateur the professional grounding he had received from Wren, and in Colvin's words, "enabled Vanbrugh's heroic designs to be translated into actuality."

Related Topics:
Blenheim Palace - John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough - Castle Howard

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In 1702, Hawksmoor designed the baroque country house of Easton Neston in Northamptonshire for Lord Lempster. This is the only country house for which he was the sole architect. Perhaps fortunately, it was not completed as he intended, for the symmetrical unexecuted flanking wings and entrance colonnade were very much in the style of John Vanbrugh; whereas the house as it stands is pure innovative Hawksmoor at his finest.

Related Topics:
1702 - Easton Neston - Northamptonshire - Lord Lempster - Country house - John Vanbrugh

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Hawksmoor conceived the idea of a round library for the Radcliffe Camera but did not design that building himself. He did design the Clarendon Building at Oxford, All Souls College, Oxford, and six new churches in London. He also designed the west front of Westminster Abbey and became Surveyor of the Abbey when Wren died in 1723.

Related Topics:
Radcliffe Camera - Clarendon Building - Oxford - All Souls College, Oxford - Westminster Abbey - 1723

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Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hawksmoor never travelled to Italy where he might have been influenced by the style of architecture there. He got his ideas from engravings books that went back to the purer Greek and Roman styles, but he was versatile in his work, and all the buildings he designed are distinctly different from each other.

Related Topics:
Italy - Architecture

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