British Interiors - Architects - John Nash (1752 - 1835)

John Nash took a circuitous route to become one of the most respected figures in the canon of English architecture. Nash was born in London in 1752, the son of a Lambeth millwright. He began his career under the guidance of Sir Robert Taylor (who became the surveyor of the King's Works in 1769), but a substantial inheritance enabled him to retire before he produced anything of significance.

He spent several years in Wales until, happily for English architecture if not for Nash, several unwise investments caused him to lose his fortune (he was declared bankrupt in 1783) and he was forced to return to his original profession.

He did not set up his own practice until 1793, indeed, he did not return to London until 1792 - prior to which he had been engaged in the design of a number of country houses in partnership with the influential landscape gardener, Humphrey Repton (believed to have first coined the term 'landscape garden').

This alliance proved highly profitable for both and, although Repton would later complain that Nash had appropriated his better clients, together they pioneered what became known as the Picturesque Movement.

The Picturesque Movement

The Picturesque is best described as an intended irregularity of style. In Nash's work, which is always elegant and according to some criteria could be described as broadly Neo-Classical, the new variety was realized as a synthesis of the most pleasing elements of different architectural periods. Nonetheless, his designs were frequently controversial and even though he became a favourite of the Prince Regent (later George IV) he was not beyond the contempt of the public, press and even the government.

One of his few surviving ecclesiastical buildings, All Souls (built 1822-5), Langham Place, London, sparked a parliamentary debate in March 1824. Comprising a gothic spire, a classical rotunda and Corinthian columns sporting cherub heads (after a design by Michelangelo), All Souls was described by one newspaper as "an extinguisher on a flat, candle stick" and politicians lambasted Nash for creating this "deplorable and horrible object," inspiring the famous cartoon where Nash appears to be impaled on his own church spire.

Regency Architecture

However, it was the innovation of Nash's style that recommended him to the Prince and which led to him becoming the principal architect of Regency England. His first royal commission engaged him in the redesign of what would become Regent's Park (then Marylebone Park) and the surrounding terraces (1811), evolving into evermore visionary (or extravagant) schemes, some of which were realized to a greater or lesser extent, and many of which were consigned to museum display cabinets (including some in the house of his great rival, Sir John Soane).

Nash is unique in the extensive town planning he was licensed to impose upon the capital, redesigning much of the West End, creating many of London's most famous thoroughfares and communal spaces; Regent's Park (although it was not until several years into Victoria's reign that the park was opened to the public- and even then only twice a week), Regent Street, Trafalgar Square (cleared as part of his Charing Cross Improvement Scheme), the Haymarket Theatre, Carlton House Terrace and St James' Park.

Regent's Park

Nash had ambitious plans to create a garden city in the vicinity of Regent's Park with elegant villas and terraces arranged around a series of lakes and canals - central to which would be the Prince's summer palace. Much of this scheme had to be abandoned, most notably the summer palace, but in the park itself (often called the jewel in London's crown) can be seen as a microcosmic illustration of the broader design.

Carlton House Terrace (1827) along the Mall exhibits Nash's continued interest in classical forms, with Doric columns at street level underlining a tier of Corinthian columns and featuring a central pediment decorated with stucco scrollwork. Nash has been broadly criticized for his enthusiastic use of hard plaster stucco. In this material he found an inexpensive way to create a variety of ornamental effects (particularly Neo-Classical motifs) and employed it liberally, prompting one historian to denigrate his style as "like too much jewellery on a beautiful woman." It is perhaps this aspect of Nash's work (coupled with what we know of the impetuosity of his character, with work left unfinished and some which had to be fully executed by his assistants) that has occasionally caused some critics to describe it as superficial.

Brighton Pavilion

However, whilst Nash elected to work in less durable materials and might sometimes be accused of being inattentive to detail (offending classical purists in particular) this is compensated by the dreamlike quality many of his designs possessed, and no more so than the Brighton Pavilion. Beginning in 1815, Nash transformed the Brighton Pavilion from a Palladian villa (by Henry Holland) into an architectural confection of domes, minarets, balconies and pagodas, inspired by the Moghul Palaces in India.

Aptly described by Doreen Yarwood as "Indian Gothic with a flavour of Chinese" this is a spectacular building with an interior to match, but its innovations were not purely aesthetic. Nash redeveloped the original pavilion by superimposing a cast-iron framework which enabled him to both significantly expand the building and to remodel it in the Oriental vocabulary. This technique inspired later generations of architects to create the vast steel-framed buildings that would come to define the Victorian landscape (and which would later be incarnated in the skeletons of the great American skyscrapers).

The opulence of the Prince's pleasure dome is sustained throughout the interior decoration. Whilst Nash often worked on the interiors of his own buildings (11 out of 15 of the residents in Carlton House Terrace commissioned Nash to decorate their homes, for example) the lavish schemes at the Brighton Pavilion were actually devised by Frederick Crace and Robert Jones.

Orientalism and Chinoiserie

Making use of the many new manufactured pigments that became available with the growth of the chemical industry, the walls were rendered chrome yellow and Chinese red (the red was obtained by heating the yellow paint), helping to create an atmosphere of exotic imperialism which reflected George's love of Chinese art. This Chinoiserie was popular, if often more modestly expressed, throughout the Georgian and Regency periods, and survived in the eastern motifs favoured by the Aesthetic movement of the later 19th Century (though used to very different effect).

Inevitably the pavilion had its detractors. William Cobbett likened it to an assortment of turnips and tulips and Queen Victoria had little affection for the building (one of her chief complaints was that it didn't have a satisfying view of the sea) and preferred to spend her summers at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. There were also some practical failings which, for some, justified their contempt.

The extravagant roof, for example, started to leak within 10 years and several of the hidden drainpipes proved inefficient- frequently overflowing and leading to dry rot. However, at this level of invention some problems are to be expected, and the Royal Pavilion was not the only project that engendered some disappointment for Nash.

Nash's difficulties with the conversion of Buckingham House (into Buckingham Palace) are well-documented. Intended for Nash's great ally, George IV, building took so long that the King died before he could move in. Such was the extravagance of Nash's scheme which included features such as a pair of winged victories supporting a proscenium arch in the throne room, walls clad in silk with plenty of gilding and sweeping marble staircases, that parliament was moved to object.

Nash's Architectural Legacy

At the accession of William IV in 1830 Nash was dismissed from the project on the grounds of profligacy and Edward Blore commissioned to finish the palace. Nash's work, whilst comprising the celebrated state rooms, is now confined to the west wing of the palace and the Royal Mews. His grand entrance to the palace which was modelled on the Constantine Arch in Rome and built in carrara marble, was removed by Blore in 1851. Believed to be too narrow for the state coach to pass through, it was placed instead at the entrance to Hyde Park but since the 1960s has stood marooned on a traffic island, uncomfortably close to where the infamous Tyburn gallows once stood. A beautiful structure, known simply as Marble Arch, its present predicament stands as testament to Nash's frustration with his last royal appointment.

Nash died five years later on May 13th in a house of his own design, East Cowes Castle on the Isle of Wight. Built in1798, this design alone had a measurable influence on early Gothic revivalism in England and abroad.

Nash's approach to his work was at times unorthodox and erratic; he is alleged to have dismantled great portions of his own buildings and started again. Some modern commentators have even speculated that Nash may have been a high-functioning autistic (sufferer of Asperger's Syndrome). Certainly his contribution to architecture was extraordinary. Articulate in such a range of techniques and genres; from the Vernacular to the Oriental, the Gothic to the Greek, Nash's career marked the advent of the Cult of Styles, thereafter anything was possible.