Lot 239: CHARLES ROBERT COCKERELL 1788--1863

THE PROPERTY OF A COMPANY

A TRIBUTE TO SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN

99 by 132 cm., 39 by 52 in.

watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour, with scratching out, on two sheets, joined, formerly inscribed on an old label: A Tribute to the memory of Sir Christopher Wren/being a collection of the principal Works../ C.R. Cockerell Arch R.A.

Engraved

by Alexander Hill, for The Royal Scottish Academy, publication 1842

PROVENANCE

Charles Robert Cockerell;
by family descent;
The Cockerell Sale in these Rooms, 23rd May 1985, lot 145 (bt by present owner)

EXHIBITED

London, Royal Academy, 1838, no 111;
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Sir Christopher Wren, 1982, no.14;
London, Barbican Art Gallery, Getting London in Perspective, 1984, no. 1;
Washington, Sir Christopher Wren and the Legacy of St. Paul's, 1990

LITERATURE

Art Union, 4, 1842, p. 118;
Wren Society, 1932, vol. IX;
David Watkin, The Life and Work of C.R. Cockerell, 1974, p.12;
Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1978, 1979, p. 223;
John Schofield, 'Charles Robert Cockerell's Tribute to Sir Christopher Wren,' London Topographical Society, 2003, p. 162-3

NOTE

Charles Robert Cockerell, the son of the architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell, was the most eminent neo-classical architect of his day. In his youth he travelled extensively on an extended Grand Tour in Greece, where he discovered the Aegina and Phigaleian marbles with the German archaeologists Haller and Linckh. He visited Turkey, and Italy, where he studied Renaissance and Baroque buildings as well as the remains of Antiquity. He returned from the trip with a sympathy, unusual at the time, for sixteenth and seventeenth century architecture.

In 1819 he succeeded his father as Surveyor of St. Paul's Cathedral and developed a profound admiration for Sir Christopher Wren, of whose buildings he remarked each 'maybe called the patriarch of a great race'. This led him to execute this watercolour 'A Tribute to Sir Christopher Wren' which shows in a great imaginary perspective, all of of Wren's major works, including thirty three of the city churches and a number of buildings then believed to be by Wren, such as Temple Bar (by Edward Marshall), Merchant Taylors School (by Robert Hooke), and the Orangery at Kensington Palace (by Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh). A study for the present work, which was broadly similar, was offered for sale in these rooms on 27th April 1989, lot 699 (Private Collection). There is some difference between the two, as the position of several buildings varies notably the Monument to the Great Fire, to the right of St. Paul's which is shown in front of the Cathedral in the study. Some of the church towers in the foreground were also rearranged. Many of the pencil drawings from Cockerell's notebooks which can also be related to this watercolour are now in the drawings collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, London.

Ten years after he painted 'A Tribute to Sir Christopher Wren' Cockerell painted 'The Professor's Dream' , a perspective incorporating the great buildings of ancient and modern times, which is now in the Royal Academy, London. These works which combine buildings of different dates and locations are part of the genre which began with Jean-Nicolas Louis Durand's (1760-1834) 'Recueil et papallele des edifices en tous genres anciens et modernes' executed in Paris in 1800. `A Tribute to Sir Christopher Wren' and 'The Professor's Dream' reflect Cockerell's own synthetic vision of architecture which saw him fusing the influences of Classical Greece with those of the Baroque and the English Renaissance, a subject on which he lectured at the Royal Academy where he was appointed Professor of Architecture in 1839.

Cockerell was the first recipient of the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1848, and became its President in 1860, his architectural career spanning over forty years. We are grateful to John Schofield for his assistance in cataloguing this watercolour.