34 C O N T E X T 1 2 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 jealous of the inevitability of Nash’s success. By this time the King had lost popularity, in no small part due to his reckless and unstoppable spending. This unpopularity rubbed off on Nash, who was seen to be encouraging the King in his monstrous extravagance. During his association with the Regent, Nash was interrogated twice. On the first occasion at a select committee of the House of Commons he was accused of theft, embezzlement and general incompetence over his mismanagement of the development of Buckingham Palace, whose construction costs were spiralling out of control. On the second occasion Colonel Davies, MP for Worcester, accused him of fraud in connection with Nash’s own building activities. Although Nash was exonerated from all charges, the feeling remained, as expounded by Baring, that ‘as a manager of public money and as an exhibitor of taste, he was sorry that the public had ever had anything to do with him’.² Nash’s real excellence lay primarily in his abilities as a town planner and secondly as an architect.While he did have other patrons and other commissions, his willingness to build anything, with sometimes no regard to either taste or cost, to retain the favour of his Royal patron was eventually his undoing. His close association with a careless, spendthrift king tarred his reputation as either a man of integrity or, as is perhaps worse for an architect, a man of taste. He was widely disliked. When the king died in 1830, Nash’s career as a public architect was ended overnight, as Nash was dismissed from the Office of Works.Well aware that his fortunes could only last as long as he had the support of the king, Nash promptly retired to the Isle of Wight. He died five years later with his reputation as an architect in tatters. Nash is by no means the only architect to have experienced the dubious honour of having one patron whose power and commissions far outweigh the influence of any other lesser patrons. The great polymath Sir Christopher Wren eventually became a victim of this same phenomenon, although for the greatest part of his career Wren avoided the pitfalls which Nash had so eagerly stepped into. Wren’s patronage was based on the Stuart line of monarchs, rather than a sole patron. For 40 years he held his position as the highly-respected, acknowledged arbiter of English architectural taste. In the end, however, he was far too closely associated with his Stuart patrons and, as they were overthrown, so was he:Wren died as little more than a has-been pauper. An expert in anatomy, astronomy, physics and meteorology,Wren came latterly to architecture when he became a favourite at the Restoration Court of Charles II. In 1668/9 he was appointed as Surveyor General of the Kings Works, his appointment being due to the personal recommendation of Charles II himself.Wren continued as Surveyor General through James II’s reign, survived theWhig Revolution of 1688, and retained his post through the subsequent reigns of William and Mary, and Queen Anne. However, 1714 brought with it the new regime of George I and with it the ascendancy of purist neoPalladianism. The writing was on the wall for Wren and his preferred baroque oeuvre, and in 1718 he was ruthlessly and disrespectfully ousted from his office.With the end of the Stuart line Wren lost his support and could no longer survive in a changing world. Lesser-known patrons also caused mixed fortunes for their protégées, and were responsible for the rise and fall of many architects. John Aislabie stands as a good example. The creator of theWater Gardens at Studley Royal, Aislabie was a great evangelist for the new neo-Palladian style and lost no opportunity to promote his favourite architect, the much better-known Colen Campbell. Aislabie was very powerful in his nativeYorkshire. Here he introduced the London architect to the nobility and gentry, gaining several important commissions for Campbell in this region. Aislabie was both patron and sponsor in this regard. However, although it certainly did not end Campbell’s career, when Aislabie spectacularly fell from grace for fraud in 1720, Campbell’s association with his patron meant that he never worked for a new client inYorkshire again.³ Many more examples of the fickleness of patronage litter the annals of architectural history. The trick with patronage seems to have been to rise high enough and fast enough to leave a respected architectural legacy, as didWren, before the popularity, power and perhaps the finances of the patron waned, leading to an abrupt career end to all with whom the patron was associated. For the most part Wren achieved this cleverly, avoiding sacrificing his scholarly design skills and architectural integrity, and managing to retain his position through a long line of four different Stuart monarchs. But eventually even he suffered for his allegiances. Nash achieved fame and greatness quickly through his association with the Regent, but quickly lost respect due to the types and costs of the schemes with which he was involved. He did not succeed in the art of managing his patron, but was entirely subject to the Regent’s whims and fancies, and of course his financial backing. Today such extreme examples of architectural patronage are rare, due to the devolution of power and money throughout society. There simply are not that many patrons with pockets so deep that they can keep a favoured architect in their thrall. Nevertheless, it still behoves the modern-day architect to look for several patrons of influence, rather than a single one and, added to this, especially to seek out patrons who can be managed and influenced, rather than the other way round. Carole Fry, a director of AHC Consultants Footnotes 1 Mansbridge, M (2004) John Nash, A Complete Catalogue 2 After Colvin, H (2008) A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 4th Edition 3 Fry, C (2006) ‘The Dissemination of Neo-Palladian Architecture in England 1701–1758’ A training session in Regent Street for the Red Cap ambassadors from LondonWest End
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=