Journée d’études : “The Architecture of James Gibbs”.

Andrea Soldi, Portrait of James Gibbs, ca. 1750, Edinbrugh, National Galleries of Scotland, Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Type : journée d’études.
Date et horaire : 29 septembre 2018 .
Lieu : Society of Antiquaries of London, Londres.

Following successful conferences sponsored by the Group in previous years on John Nash and the Adam Brothers, the Georgian Group is organising a day-long symposium on the work of James Gibbs (1682–1754). Born in Scotland and trained in Rome, Gibbs was one of the most important British architects of the eighteenth century, responsible for such well-known buildings such as the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London and the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, and for many other commissions, both public and private, throughout the British Isles. He also published one of the most influential of all eighteenth-century architectural pattern books, as a result of which his influence spread throughout the worldwide British diaspora. Drawing upon recent research, the symposium will reassess, and throw new light upon, his achievement and its significance for the understanding of Georgian architecture.

The symposium will be held from 10am to 5.15pm and will be led by Dr Geoffrey Tyack, editor of The Georgian Group Journal. Speakers will include leading authorities on eighteenth-century British architecture and decorative art—among them Andrew Martindale, Peter Guillery, Richard Hewlings, Charles Hind, Hugh Petter, and Alec Cobbe—and younger scholars. There will be papers on Gibbs’s Scottish background and his training in Rome; his work in London; his university buildings in Oxford and Cambridge; his country houses in both Britain and Ireland; his contribution to interior design, with special reference to plasterwork; his transatlantic influence; his portrait busts; and his relevance to the classical architecture of our own day.

Following the symposium there will be a reception at the church of St Peter, Vere Street (just north of Oxford Street), built to Gibbs’s designs in 1721–24, with superb plasterwork by the Swiss-Italian plasterers Artari and Bagutti.

Student tickets: A number of tickets at reduced rates are available for students registered on a degree-level course (both full-time and part-time).

Programme

9.30  Registration

10.00  Opening address

Session 1
• Andrew Martindale, ‘Mr Gibbs, the Scottish Architect’
• William Aslet, Gibbs: Knowledge and the Fashioning of a Professional Reputation in London
• Alex Echlin, James Gibbs and the historiography of Early Eighteenth-Century English Architecture

Break

Session 2
• Peter Guillery, James Gibbs and the Cavendish-Harley Estate in Marylebone
• Geoffrey Tyack, Gibbs in Cambridge and Oxford
• Ann-Marie Akehurst, Inferior to None: James Gibbs, the Royal Naval Hospital at Stonehouse, and l’affaire de l’Hotel-Dieu

Session 3
• Richard Hewlings, Gibbs’s Scale Bars
• Jenny Saunt, Ornament and the Architect: James Gibbs’s Interactions with Decorative Plasterwork and Furniture

Lunch

Session 4
• Ricky Pound, James Gibbs and the Octagon Room at James Johnston’s Villa at Twickenham
• Pete Smith, Gibbs at Kiveton Park, Yorkshire
• Alec Cobbe, The Path of a James Gibbs Discovery: Newbridge House, Ireland

Break

Session 5
• Michael Bevington, James Gibbs and His Garden Buildings at Stowe: Inventor and Mentor
• Charles Hind, Transatlantic Influence: A Book of Architecture and the American Colonies
• Dana Josephson, Portrait Busts of Gibbs: New Discoveries
• Hugh Petter, James Gibbs and the Enduring Legacy of Popular Classical Architecture

5.45 Reception at St Peter, Vere Street