V&A explores exuberance of Georgian architect and designer William Kent
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Version 0 of 1. "You might think Georgian means good taste," says Julius Bryant, curator of the V&A's exhibition, Designing Georgian Britain, which charts the work of the prolific 18th-century polymath William Kent. "In which case you're in for a nasty shock." Behind him stands a tableau of tables and chairs, sofas and mirrors, groaning under the weight of gilded swags and swirling scrollwork. The fleshy face of Bacchus bursts out from a laurel wreath, while horns of plenty spill forth their bounty across the back of a settee. Scallop shells jostle for position with swollen cherubs, no surface left unadorned. "I was wondering why there hadn't been a major Kent exhibition before, and why he isn't more popular," says Bryant. "I think it's because it all verges on the edge of kitsch. Kent is bling." Best known as architect of Horse Guards and the Treasury in Whitehall, and designer of the gardens at Chiswick, Rousham and Stowe, Kent, is revealed in this show an exuberant stylist of unparalleled versatility, turning his hand from country houses to royal barges, skipping deftly from classical to gothic in the same beat. "He was a great opportunist," says Bryant, describing how Kent would move in as a houseguest, with a commission to paint the ceiling, "then take over everything, cuckoo-like, until he was designing your furniture, your garden and even your clothes – including ladies' birthday dresses decorated with the classical orders". He achieved this, it seems, through a combination of immense personal charm and considerable creative energy. The son of a joiner from Bridlington, Kent was sponsored by a group of Yorkshire gentlemen to spend 10 years in Italy, "And think not of coming home until you are a second Raphael." There he encountered Lord Burlington, who brought him back to England in 1719 and declared him the taste-maker par excellence, promoting his talents for the next 30 years. "It was really the emergence of 'brand Britain'," says Bryant. "Kent filled the expectation for a new national style, following the act of union and the accession of the new Hanoverian royal family. He was like Terence Conran, or the Ikea catalogue." A commission to decorate the halls of Kensington Palace was soon followed by a sequence of entertaining rooms at Houghton Hall for prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, alongside lavish interiors for countless country piles. "He provided an antidote to the grand tour syndrome," says Bryant. "From living the highlife in Italian palaces, young society gentlemen would come back to inherited estates in muddy fields in Norfolk. Kent's flamboyant interiors allowed them to relive the dream." His unstoppable rise to the peak of fashionable prominence did not go unnoticed by the envious Hogarth, whose satirical drawing, The Bad Taste of the Town, depicts a statue of "Kentino" – as he was known to his clients – atop an overblown triumphal arch above the letters TASTE. Other Hogarth paintings portray Kent's interiors as heavily encrusted, laden with fattened pediments and parodies of his extravagant furniture, on show here next to the real things. A section on his landscape projects reveals how Kent designed gardens as a painter would, drawing picturesque scenes from key viewpoints, and going as far as planting of dead trees to achieve the right romantic effect. "Mahomet imagined an Elysium," wrote Horace Walpole. "Kent created many." Among the 200 items on display, from sketches and measured drawings to chandeliers and tureens, an imposing wooden model of Kent's design for a summer palace stands out, unearthed from the vaults of Windsor and on show the first time. Commissioned by Queen Caroline for a site in Richmond Park in 1735, it would have been the country's only purpose-built royal palace, but plans were halted when she died two years later. Were there ever attempts to revive the plan? "Well," says Bryant. "If you know any Chinese billionaires." The exhibition is at the V&A from 22 March to 13 July 2014. |