Sir Robert Smirke (1 October 1780 – 18 April 1867) was an English architect, one of the leaders of Greek Revival architecture, though he also used other architectural styles (such as Gothic and Tudor). As an attached (i.e. official) architect within the Office of Works, he designed several major public buildings, including the main block and façade of the British Museum and altered or repaired others. He was a pioneer in the use of structural iron and concrete foundations, and was highly respected for his accuracy and professionalism. His advice was often sought in architectural competitions and urban planning, especially later in his life.
Background and training
Smirke was born in London on 1 October 1780, the second son of the portrait painter Robert Smirke; he was one of twelve children.page 73, J. Mordaunt Crook: The British Museum A Case-study in Architectural Politics, 1972, Pelican Books He attended Aspley School, Aspley Guise, Bedfordshire,page 74, J. Mordaunt Crook: The British Museum A Case-study in Architectural Politics, 1972, Pelican Books where he studied Latin, Greek, French and drawing, and was made head boy at the age of 15. In May 1796, on the recommendation of George Dance the Younger, Smirke he began his study of architecture as a pupil of John Soane but left after only a few months in early 1797 due to a personality clash with his teacher.pages 137–8, Gillian Darley, John Soane An Accidental Romantic, 1999, Yale University Press He wrote to his father:
He (Soane) was on Monday morning in one of his amiable Tempers. Everything was slovenly that I was doing. My drawing was slovenly because it was too great a scale, my scale, also, being too long, and he finished saying the whole of it was excessively slovenly, and that I should draw it out again on the back not to waste another sheet about it.page 65, Dorothy Stroud, Sir John Soane Architect, 1984, Faber and Faber
In 1796, he also began his studies at the Royal Academy, winning the Silver Medal and the Silver Palette of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce that year. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Academy in 1799 for his design for a National Museum. After leaving Soane he depended on George Dance the Younger and a surveyor called Thomas Bush for his architectural training.
In 1801, accompanied by his elder brother Richard, he attempted to embark on a Grand Tour, but was forced to return to England because war with France made it impossible to travel safely without fear of arrest. The short-lived Peace of Amiens the following year allowed British travellers to visit France, and Smirke set off again in September 1802 in the company of the artist William Walker, returning early in 1805. His itinerary and impressions are recorded in a series of letters and journals he wrote, many preserved in the archive of the RIBA, and in the many drawings he made of buildings and locations. In France he visited places such as Paris, Lyon, Avignon, Nîmes, Arles and Marseille; he was particularly impressed by the various Roman monuments in the south of the country. While in Italy, he passed through Genoa, Pisa, Florence and Siena but spent almost two months in Rome where he made the decision to visit Greece. Embarking from Messina, he travelled via the Ionian Islands to Corinth and the Argolid. Turning south into the Peloponnese, he saw the famous sites of Messene, Megalopolis, Bassai and Olympia, before travelling on to Athens where he spent a month sketching the monuments. From Athens Smirke wrote to his father: How can I by description give you any idea of the great pleasure I enjoyed in the sight of these ancient buildings of Athens! How strongly were exemplified in them the grandeur and effect of simplicity in architecture! The Temple of Theseus (Temple of Hephaestus)... cannot but arrest the attention of everyone from its appropriate and dignified solemnity of appearance. The temple of Minerva (Parthenon)... strikes one in the same way with its grandeur and majesty. We were a month there. The impression made upon my mind... had not in that time in the least weakened by being frequently repeated and I could with pleasure spend a much longer time there, while those in Rome (with few exceptions) not only soon grow in some degree uninteresting but have now entirely sunk into disregard and contempt in my mind. All that I could do in Athens was to make some views of them...hoping that they will serve as a memorandum to me of what I think should always be a model.'pages 52–53, J. Mordaunt Crook: The Greek Revival Neo-Classical Attitudes in British Architecture 1760–1870, 1972, John Murray
Following his departure from Athens, Smirke visited other famous ancient sites such as Thebes and Delphi.
Smirke's return from Greece was complicated by the resumption of war between Britain and France, and he had to travel via Sicily and Malta to avoid the risk of capture by enemy troops, though this challenge allowed him to visit and draw some of the famous Greek archaeological sites of Sicily. He also managed to revisit Naples (seeing the ruins of Pompeii and Paestum) and Rome, as well as other cities, as he travelled up the Italian peninsula towards Venice, Padua, Vicenza and Verona. Crossing into Austrian territory, he visited Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague before moving on to Dresden and Berlin, returning to England via Heligoland in early January 1805.
His extensive travels through most of the major centres of Europe provided him with an unparalleled insight on ancient, Renaissance and more recent architecture. His poor opinion of many of the more recent buildings he saw, even in Rome and Paris, combined with the overwhelming impact of ancient Greek structures, triggered a significant shift in his architectural tastes. Whereas his earlier designs had been in the conventional French Neo-Classical idiom of the time, influenced by his mentor George Dance the Younger and by John Soane, most of the classical-style buildings he designed as a professional architect were firmly rooted in the Greek Revival. Unlike some of his contemporaries he did not visit (modern) Turkey. His knowledge of its ancient buildings, which were crucial to Ionic order widely used in the 1820s, especially the British Museum, was derived from publications such as Ionian Antiquities of 1769 by Richard Chandler, William Pars and Nicholas Revett.
During his Grand Tour, Smirke made drawings and watercolours of many buildings, including most of the surviving ancient structures in Athens and the Morea. Most however were never published, and few were exhibited in his lifetime, though a considerable number are preserved in the RIBA, the Paul Mellon Center for British Art, the British Museum, and other collections.
Career
In 1805, Smirke became a member of the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Architects' Club. His first official appointment came in 1807 when he was made architect to the Royal Mint.page 75, J. Mordaunt Crook: The British Museum A Case-study in Architectural Politics, 1972, Pelican Books He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy on 7 November 1808, and a full Academician on 11 February 1811, his diploma work consisting of a drawing of a reconstruction of the Acropolis of Athens.page 52, Masterworks: Architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts, Neil Bingham, 2011 Royal Academy of Arts, He only ever exhibited five works at the Academy, the last in 1810.pages 163–4, Algernon Graves The Royal Academy: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors from its Foundations in 1769 to 1904, Volume 7, 1905, Henry Graves
Smirke's relations with Soane reached a new low after the latter, who had been appointed Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, heavily criticised Smirke's design for the Covent Garden Opera House in his fourth lecture on 29 January 1810.pages 194–5, Gillian Darley, John Soane An Accidental Romantic, 1999, Yale University Press He said:
The practise of sacrificing everything to one front of a building is to be seen, not only in small houses where economy might in some degree apologize for the absurdity, but it is also apparent in large works of great expense ... And these drawings of a more recent work (here two drawings of Covent Garden theatre were displayed) point out the glaring impropriety of this defect in a manner if possible still more forcible and more subversive of true taste. The public attention, from the largeness of the building, being particularly called to the contemplation of this national edificepage 544, David Watkin, Sir John Soane Architect, Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures, 1996, Cambridge University Press
Together with John Nash and Sir John Soane, he was appointed as attached (i.e. official) architect to the Office of Works in 1815 (an appointment he held until 1832) at a salary of £500 per annum,Page 98, Sir John Soane Architect, Dorothy Stroud, 1984, Faber & Faber thereby reaching the height of the profession. In 1819 he was made surveyor of the Inner Temple. In 1819, he married Laura Freston, daughter of The Reverend Anthony Freston, the great-nephew of the architect Matthew Brettingham. The only child of the marriage was a daughter Laura. In 1820, he was made surveyor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and also in 1820 he became treasurer to the Royal Academy.Page 263, John Soane An Accidental Romantic, Gillian Darley, 1999, Yale University Press He was knighted in 1832, and received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 1853. Smirke lived at 81 Charlotte Street, London, commemorated now by a blue plaque on the building. He retired from practice in 1845, after which Robert Peel made him a member of the Commission for London Improvements. In 1859, he resigned from the Royal Academy and retired to Cheltenham, where he lived in Montpellier House, Suffolk Square. He died there on 18 April 1867 and was buried in the churchyard of St Peter's Church, Leckhampton. His estate was worth £90,000.
He is known to have designed or remodelled over twenty churches, more than fifty public buildings and more than sixty private houses. This productivity inspired James Planché's 1846 chorus in his burlesque of Aristophanes' The Birds: Go to work, rival Smirke Make a dash, À la Nash Something try at, worthy Wyatt Plans out carry, great as Barry The rapid rise of Smirke was due to a combination of his great ability with significant political patronage.page 79, J. Mordaunt Crook: The British Museum A Case-study in Architectural Politics, 1972, Pelican Books He was a Tory at a time when this party was in the ascendant. His friends at the Royal Academy, such as Sir Thomas Lawrence, George Dance, Benjamin West and Joseph Farington, were able to introduce him to patrons such as: the 1st Marquess of Abercorn; the 1st Viscount Melville; Sir George Beaumont, 7th Baronet; the 4th Earl of Aberdeen; the 3rd Marquess of Hertford; the 3rd Earl Bathurst; John 'Mad Jack' Fuller; and the 2nd Earl of Lonsdale. These politicians and aristocrats ensured his rapid advancement and several were to commission buildings from Smirke themselves. Thomas Leverton Donaldson described Smirke as able to please "Men whom it was proverbially impossible to please".page 81, J. Mordaunt Crook: 'The British Museum A Case-study in Architectural Politics, 1972, Pelican Books His patron at Lowther Castle, the 1st Earl of Lonsdale, said he was "ingenious, modest and gentlemanly in his manners".page 81, J. Mordaunt Crook: The British Museum A Case-study in Architectural Politics, 1972, Pelican Books
Style
Classicism