The Victorian Art School

Architecture, History, Environment

Ranald Lawrence

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000169607
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architektur
• Subtopic: Architekturkritik

The Victorian Art School documents the history of the art school in the nineteenth century, from its origins in South Kensington to its proliferation through the major industrial centres of Britain. Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art, together with earlier examples in Manchester and Birmingham demonstrate an unprecedented concern for the provision of plentiful light and air amidst the pollution of the Victorian city. As theories of design education and local governance converged, they also reveal the struggle of the provincial city for cultural independence from the capital.

Examining innovations in the use of new technologies and approaches in the design of these buildings, The Victorian Art School offers a unique and explicitly environmental reading of the Victorian city. It examines how art schools complemented civic 'Improvement' programmes, their contribution to the evolution of art pedagogy, the tensions that arose between the provincial schools and the capital, and the role they would play in reimagining the relationship between art and public life in a rapidly transforming society.

The architects of these buildings synthesised the potential of art with the perfection of the internal environment, indelibly shaping the future cultural life of Britain.

1
Introduction

Art schools have had a disproportionate impact on contemporary art culture and our built environment. A legacy of the 1851 Great Exhibition, the story of the state-funded Victorian art school reveals much about the revolutions that took place in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art in Britain, modern theories of design, art pedagogy, and high-end economic production; what today we might call ‘the knowledge economy’. Through design education, the ‘masses’ were permitted access to new ideas about urban life, redemption from the environmental catastrophe of the Industrial Revolution, and to a better, brighter future. This book documents the history of the Victorian art school, from its genesis in the complex of museum and studios at South Kensington to the construction of new schools in Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow; the legacy of which still shapes cultural life in these cities to the present.

It is not the explicit intention of this book to develop a thesis on political economy, municipal governance, nor changing definitions of culture – though these themes form part of the background to the central narrative. Neither is it a general survey of art schools or studios in this country or abroad. After considering the beginnings of the schools in the Department of Science and Art at South Kensington, it investigates three case studies in chronological order of construction; Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow. The architecture of these buildings, and the details of the day-to-day life they accommodated, are revealed with the help of archival material, drawings, and photographs taken shortly after they were opened.

Other art schools secondary to the architectural narrative of this book have been excluded, but nonetheless merit further study. For example, the undecorated slender mullions and steel lintels of Leeds School of Art suggest a proto-functionalism reminiscent of Mackintosh’s work in Glasgow – however this contrasts with the Queen Anne Revival red brick and stone of the rest of the building.¹ Herbert McNair and Frances MacDonald played a pivotal role developing a new practical art and crafts pedagogy at Liverpool School of Architecture and Applied Art, and its graduates exported its Beaux Arts planning philosophy across the world. However the school was housed in a series of temporary ‘Art Sheds’ in the quadrangle of University College, independent of the broader national network of schools established from South Kensington.² Other schools focusing on fine art, such as the Slade School of Fine Art and the Ruskin School of Drawing, grew out of established seats of learning, free from the auspices of the Department of Science and Art and its focus on the application of practical art or design to industry. They were often accommodated ad-hoc in buildings that formed part of a larger educational campus.³

Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow have been selected as they were the first, and arguably the most successful, of the large schools that opened outside of London in this period. They were housed in buildings in what were the most environmentally degraded industrial cities in Britain – if not the world – at that time. This book approaches each building through the lens of a specific theme; beginning with the search for an appropriate architectural language to represent the ambitions of the new school in Manchester; examining the importance of daylight for the creation and display of art in Birmingham; and examining the role of new environmental technology in forging a new architectural relationship to the climate of the city in Glasgow.

The first chapter will examine the social and environmental context of the industrial cities of the north of Britain, largely untouched by the established art institutions of the capital. At this time Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow were emerging from a period of unparalleled physical, political, and cultural change. New forms of local government were established to order and ‘improve’ the living and working conditions of new populations of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.

The improvement of these cities provided opportunities for integrating architectural, civic, and social goals, and the shaping of a distinctive regional identity in relation to the capital. A carefully narrated chronology of the past would be allied to a contemporary concern for the health of the urban economy, not only in terms of industrial output but also of ‘culture’. Improving the environment of the city and promoting the role of art in reshaping society went hand in hand, and ‘culture’, interpreted in different ways, was the process by which a physically and metaphorically cleaner and brighter future could be brought about after the tumult and upheaval of the Industrial Revolution.

The second chapter describes how technological developments in lighting and optics fundamentally changed art practice at the end of the eighteenth century. More powerful sources of light permitted larger groups of artists to work together on the same subject, establishing the culture of the studio class that we are still familiar with. However, the art revolutions that would occur in the nineteenth century cannot be ascribed to lighting technology alone. It is also important to understand the economic and administrative events that led to the state-sanctioned expansion of art education across the country.⁴ The founding of the Schools of Design in 1837 led to the establishment of a ‘bureaucracy of beauty’ at South Kensington, led by Prince Albert’s favoured civil servant Henry Cole.⁵

Cole’s vision of a unified national institution was realised in the first purpose-built studio complex, linked to the Museum of Manufactures at South Kensington by the lavish West Staircase (Figure 1.1). The schools were intended to act as a cohesive instrument of government policy, disseminating the right sort of artistic training necessary for economic progress, and overseeing standards of teaching. Detailed instructions were published describing what the new Department of Science and Art regarded as the correct spatial brief for art schools in other cities. The dry practicality of this brief, and the schedules of approved furnishings and fittings, prevented the boards of provincial schools from justifying any expenditure in terms that asserted their own priorities.

FIGURE 1.1 Francis Fowke, Studios at South Kensington, 1863. Now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum. (Author).

The third chapter will extend the London-centric history of the administration of the schools by examining the role local politicians and businessmen played in supporting new provincial branches. It examines the arguments that were advanced in the speeches and public meetings that accompanied the fundraising for a new art school building in Manchester, and examines the motivations of the speakers who offered their support, including their aspiration to improve civic life through the development and dissemination of a local art culture, differentiated from the offer of South Kensington. Allying the promotion of ‘noble art’ with a belief in the perfectibility of the environment, local politicians challenged the limited objectives of central government to address the needs of industry. The broader ‘trickle down’ effect of extending art education to all was critical for the reformulation of a sustainable local economy, and by extension a cleaner, brighter, improved city.

With a limited budget, much debate ensued as to whether the appearance or the function of the new building should be prioritised. Visiting in 1877, Henry Cole told the Management Committee in Manchester: ‘I hope you will allow the stern necessities of a School, and common sense, to have the first consideration in its construction’. Architect George Tunstal Redmayne promised, however, to design a building that ‘will also possess architectural features worthy of the object and of the period’. These tensions would be set in stone in the façade of the new school, adjoining Richard Lane’s Doric Town Hall of 1830 (Figure 1.2).

FIGURE 1.2 George Tunstal Redmayne, Manchester School of Art, 1881. Façade to All Saints Gardens. (Author).

Arguably what distinguishes the art school from the train shed, or the Great Exhibition building, or other new Victorian building types such as schools and hospitals, is its architectural rather than engineering programme. It is a building concerned with atmosphere, and the symbolism of light and its visual impression were clearly design criteria equal to – if not more important than – the quantitative criteria of science.

The fourth chapter therefore explores how the design of Birmingham School of Art was resolved and refined through changes made to the scale and form of the building, in particular carefully proportioning and orientating the studios to receive the right kind of daylight (Figure 1.3). The transparency offered by the extensive use of glass broke down barriers not only to light but also space, changing the relationship between the individual and the public.⁶ As daylight acquired new significance, new artificial lighting technologies also enabled a social revolution: at home, in the workplace, and in education. To understand the impact of this revolution it is necessary to be specific about what light was being used for, when, and where – the ‘tacit perceptual practices’ that were ‘deeply embedded in habitual, daily routines’.⁷

FIGURE 1.3 Chamberlain and Martin, Birmingham School of Art, 1885.

This book aims to contextualise these transformations in the use of glass, daylight, and artificial light within a building type unambiguously concerned with vision and illumination in the production and dissemination of art culture. By framing the significance of the respective roles of central government...