Sir John Vanbrugh - Summary

Sir John Vanbrugh, playwright, designer and architect, was one of the most influential members of the British 'baroque' movement of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

He was born as the fourth child of 19 in 1664. By 1667 Vanburgh and his family had settled in Chester, England following the outbreak of plague in London.

In 1681 Vanbrugh and William Matthews, his cousin, ventured into the London wine business, although this was to last for less than a year. A year later he joined the East India Company where he served for four years. During this time it is likely that he visited India and may well have begun to appreciate the architecture of the East. 

In 1688 Vanbrugh found himself in France with Lord Willoughby, having praised William of Orange who had recently declared war with France. For the previous two years Vanbrugh had served in the 7th Earl of Huntingdon's infantry regiment.

Vanbrugh was soon arrested in Calais and was held for a time in the city's citadel. He was to spend a period in the Bastille before returning to England, with no papers, in 1692.

On his return, Vanbrugh became a member of the Whig political and literary circle known as the 'Kit-Cat Club'. The club's serious aim was to secure the Protestant succession against the heirs of the Catholic James II. For Vanbrugh however, the club became an important source of architectural clients. This was where he met Charles Howard, the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, who was looking to commission an architect to build an ancestral home in Yorkshire, England.

Having won the commission ahead of William Talman, Vanbrugh's plans for Castle Howard were made, revised and approved by 1699. The palace is profusely decorated, with a central building encased in an order of giant pilasters and surmounted by a large dome. The form of the interior harked back to royal palaces, as visitors moved further into progressively private apartments to the east and west. 

The exterior of the house reveals more interesting details typical of Vanbrugh. The southern façade facing the parterre consists of a nine-bay, two-storey face with single storey wings. The 10 fluted Corinthian pilasters are on a large scale, while the central four bays are more prominent, crowned by a central pediment. Pevsner suggests that the area is ‘eminently festive' and as such celebrates the parterre it faces.

The landscape, which in the main lies to the south of the house, shows signs of Vanbrugh's design aesthetic. The Carrmire Gate, for example, is the first element of the designed landscape that the visitor encounters when approaching the house. A rustic pointed arch is flanked on either side by castellated walls, terminating in circular bastions. Here the design includes both medieval and antique motifs through the use of classical doorways, as well as the medieval arrow-slit windows. Other landscape features including the large-scale bastion walls and Pyramid Gate similarly hark back to an earlier, 'golden' past that incorporated medieval, Roman, and Classical symbolism.

This Classical theme is repeated throughout the landscape through the Temples of Venus and the Four Winds, as well as the parterre with its inclusion of statues and obelisks. Each of these features can be found to relate directly to the works of Andrea Palladio, the Renaissance theorist and designer.  

Vanbrugh's other notable commission was that of Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, another building of palatial proportions, and soon to be home of John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough. On his return from victory at the Battle of Blenheim (1704), John Churchill was greeted with a hero's reward of Woodstock Park in Oxfordshire, which was granted by Parliament in March 1705. Marlborough requested a design similar to that of Castle Howard, but it became larger and more dramatic.

In the surrounding landscape, Vanbrugh was responsible for the large parterre, flanked on either side by bastion walls. Half a mile to the south-east, a second parterre was designed with two round pools and four 100-foot bastions, punctuating 14-foot-high brick walls. 

Vanbrugh's other notable works in England included Stowe and its designed landscape in Buckinghamshire (1720); Vanbrugh Castle, Greenwich (1718); Seaton Delaval, Northumberland (1720-28); Duncombe Park, Yorkshire (1713); Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire (1725).

During the years between his military and architectural careers, Vanbrugh was also a playwright. His most famous works include The Relapse, and the Provok'd Wife. 

Sources:

Downes, Kerry, Sir John Vanbrugh: A Biography (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1987) 

- ‘Vanbrugh, Sir John (1664–1726)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28059> [accessed 8 Oct 2007]

Switzer, Stephen, Iconographia Rustica, Vol. II (D. Brown, 1718)