John Vanbrugh

Baptised January 24, 1664, died March 26, 1726.

John Vanbrugh was a famous dramatist and English Baroque architect, most known for his comedies The Relapse (1696) and The Provok’d Wife (1697) and for Blenheim Palace (Oxfordshire) and Castle Howard (Yorkshire) which he designed.

He was born as the son of a businessman in Chester and educated there. In 1686 he joined the army and in 1690he was arrested in Calais, France, for possibly being an English spy. He was released in 1692. In prison, he wrote his first piece of drama.

His first comedies The Relapse and The Provok’d Wife were major successes. Jeremy Collier’s Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698) especially aimed at Vanbrugh’s very explicit works.

In 1702 Vanbrugh started working as an architect by designing Castle Howard (Yorkshire). Christopher Wren’s clerk Nicholas Hawksmoor became Vanbrugh’s assistant i.e. partner. Their buildings are marked by a “rhythmic effect of diversified masses” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Vanbrugh usually worked on the general plans of their constructions and Hawksmoor was concerned with the details.

In 1705 Vanbrugh established the Queen’s Theatre in London and afterwards became its manager and principal author. The theatrical means of surprise and illusion that he learned there can supposedly be traced in his architecture, too. From 1705 till 1716 he and Hawksmoor built their most famous construction: Blenheim Palace.

In 1714 George I knighted him and made him comptroller again (i.e. he was in charge of arranging royal ceremonial affairs), an office that he had already held in 1702 under Queen Anne I.

In the 17th century artists were supposed to conform to conventional morals and to have social aspirations. While many artists were social outsiders, John Vanbrugh enjoyed aristocratic company very much.

He was a member of the exclusive Kit Cat club that from 1703 onward became the place to be for Whigs. Vanbrugh was a Whig in his early days himself and therefore, Whig aristocrats also were his patrons.

Sources

"Sir John Vanbrugh." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 19 Jul. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/622815/Sir-John-Vanbrugh>.

Hook, Judith. The Baroque Age in England. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976.