Edward William Godwin
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
architect-designer, who began his career working in the strongly polychromatic "Ruskinian
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
Gothic" style of mid-Victorian Britain, inspired by The Stones of Venice
The Stones of Venice (book)
The Stones of Venice is a three-volume treatise on Venetian art and architecture by English art historian John Ruskin, first published from 1851 to 1853. Intending to prove how the architecture in Venice exemplified the principles he discussed in his earlier work, The Seven Lamps of Architecture,...
, then moved on to provide designs in the "Anglo-Japanese taste" of the Aesthetic Movement and Whistler
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...
's circle in the 1870s. Godwin's influence can be detected in the Arts and Crafts Movement
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
.
His best known early works include The Guild Hall
Northampton Guildhall
Northampton Guildhall is a building which stands on St Giles' Square in Northampton, England.-Original building:It was built to the design of Edward William Godwin begun when he was only 28 between 1861 and 1864 in neo-gothic style. As well as housing Northampton Borough Council, it is also used...
, Northampton
Northampton
Northampton is a large market town and local government district in the East Midlands region of England. Situated about north-west of London and around south-east of Birmingham, Northampton lies on the River Nene and is the county town of Northamptonshire. The demonym of Northampton is...
(illustration, right), which was his first notable public commission, and Town Hall, Congleton
Congleton
Congleton is a town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England, on the banks of the River Dane, to the west of the Macclesfield Canal and 21 miles south of Manchester. It has a population of 25,750.-History:The first settlements in...
, as well as restorations and neo-Gothic additions to Dromore Castle, Limerick and Castle Ashby
Castle Ashby
Castle Ashby is the name of a civil parish, an estate village and an English country house in rural Northamptonshire. Historically the village was set up to service the needs of Castle Ashby Manor, the seat of the Marquess of Northampton. The village has one small pub-hotel, The Falcon. At the time...
.
Biography
Apprenticed to an engineer in Bristol, where his architectural training was largely self-taught, Godwin moved to London about 1862, and made the acquaintance of the reform Gothic designer William BurgesWilliam Burges (architect)
William Burges was an English architect and designer. Amongst the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, Burges sought in his work an escape from 19th century industrialisation and a return to the values, architectural and social, of an imagined mediaeval England...
. As an antiquary, he had a particular interest in medieval costume and furniture and architecture.
Godwin was widowed in 1865; his affair with the renowned actress Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
between 1868 and 1874, incurred her retirement with him to Hertfordshire, and produced two children: Edith Craig
Edith Craig
Edith Ailsa Geraldine Craig was a prolific theatre director, producer, costume designer and early pioneer of the women's suffrage movement in England...
and Edward Gordon Craig
Edward Gordon Craig
Edward Henry Gordon Craig , sometimes known as Gordon Craig, was an English modernist theatre practitioner; he worked as an actor, director and scenic designer, as well as developing an influential body of theoretical writings...
(1872–1966), who became an important actor, designer, director, and theoretical writer of the early 20th century European stage. The affair inspired Godwin to spend much time designing theatrical costumes and scenery. After she returned to the theater and their connection cooled, Godwin married a young designer in his office, Beatrice/Beatrix Birnie Philip (1857–1896), who bore him a son. After Godwin's death, she and the painter James Whistler married, in 1888. Godwin was a frequent contributor to the periodical British Architect and published a number of books on architecture, costume and theatre.
To judge from his sketchbooks at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
, one might have expected an eclectic
Eclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
historicist, but Godwin, by no means a tame reproducer of antiquarian Gothic designs, was among the first to extend the European design repertory to include the arts of Japan, which had been opened to the Western world in 1853. His Anglo-Japanese style
Anglo-Japanese style
Anglo-Japanese is a term used to describe a style which developed in the period from approximately 1851 to 1900, when a new awareness of, and appreciation for Japanese design and culture affected the art, especially the decorative art, and architecture of England. The first use of the term occurs...
of furniture, mostly executed with an ebonized finish, was designed for Dromore Castle and his own use from 1867
Sideboard (Edward William Godwin)
This sideboard was designed by Edward William Godwin , who was one of the most important exponents of Victorian 'Japonisme', the term used to describe the appreciation and appropriation of Japanese artistic styles...
. Similar designs produced later by the firms of William Watt and Collinson & Lock also emphasised the stripped-down "Anglo-Japanese taste" pared of merely decorative touches. The spirit of Japan, rather than mere details, is strongly revealed in a black cabinet Godwin designed for Collinson & Lock, now at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York.
In the 1870s and 80s Godwin's designs could be found at Liberty and Co.
Liberty (department store)
Liberty is a long-established department store in Regent Street in Central London, England, in the West End shopping district.-Early years:...
; his wallpapers, printed textiles, tiles, "art furniture" or metalwork set the tone in houses of those with an artistic and progressive bent. Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
was among his clients, and Princess Louise
Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll
The Princess Louise was a member of the British Royal Family, the sixth child and fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband, Albert, Prince Consort.Louise's early life was spent moving between the various royal residences in the...
, for whom he designed a studio at Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace is a royal residence set in Kensington Gardens in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, England. It has been a residence of the British Royal Family since the 17th century and is the official London residence of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Duke and...
.
In 1877 the painter James Whistler, himself a connoisseur of Japanese prints, commissioned Godwin to build him a house in Tite Street
Tite Street
Tite Street is a street in Chelsea, London, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, England, just north of the River Thames. It was created in 1877, giving access to the Chelsea Embankment. In the late nineteenth century the street was a favoured and fashionable location for people of an...
, Chelsea
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an area of West London, England, bounded to the south by the River Thames, where its frontage runs from Chelsea Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Cheyne Walk, Lots Road and Chelsea Harbour. Its eastern boundary was once defined by the River Westbourne, which is now in a pipe above...
, which Godwin completed the following year, in spite of its being initially objected to by The Metropolitan Board of Works. Unfortunately Whistler's bankruptcy in 1879 forced the sale of the house along with the rest of the painter's effects. The buyer of the house, an art critic, made alterations that Whistler and Godwin deplored. (The White House was demolished in the 1960s.) Whistler and Godwin shared an interest in Chinese and Japanese art and collaborated over The White House and in a number of projects involving furniture and interior design, notably "Harmony in Yellow and Gold: The Butterfly Cabinet". When Whistler exhibited his radical Impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
paintings of Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Godwin entirely redecorated the exhibition galleries to complement them. Another house in Tite Street was commissioned by Frank Miles
Frank Miles
George Francis "Frank" Miles was a London artist who specialised in pastel portraits of society ladies, also an architect and a keen plantsman.-Life and career:...
and completed the following year, 1878, originally number 1 but still standing and now numbered 44. Miles lived there, initially with his friend Oscar Wilde, until committed to an assylum in 1887, after which it was sold by his family to the artist, GP Jacomb-Hood. The house is on the market in 2011 for £15,500,000.
In 1881, he designed a new entrance for the premises in Bond Street
Bond Street
Bond Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London that runs north-south through Mayfair between Oxford Street and Piccadilly. It has been a fashionable shopping street since the 18th century and is currently the home of many high price fashion shops...
of the Fine Art Society
Fine Art Society
The Fine Art Society is an art dealership with two premises, one in New Bond Street, London and the other in Edinburgh . It was formed in 1876...
, a progressive venue for exhibitions of new art, where one of the first exhibitions of Japanese woodblock prints was held.
External links
- Edward William Godwin
- Victorian Web: Edward William Godwin; bibliography
Further reading
- Soros, Susan Weber, (ed.) E. W. Godwin: Aesthetic Movement Architect and Designer, (Yale University Press) New Haven, 1999.