The Great Game: The Classical Architecture of Sir Edwin Lutyens
Abstract
Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) was one of the most inventive and prolific Classical architects in Britain in the twentieth century, and his work is now much admired around the world. To understand his mature buildings, how they were conceived, detailed and executed, one needs to understand the man, and the story of his evolution as an architect. This paper explains that journey. From his unusual education in his youth, and the Arts and Crafts Movement into which as a young architect he was born; his early integration of Classical details within vernacular designs; his ‘Wrenaissance’ (increasing fascination with the work of Sir Christopher Wren [1632-1723]) and his evolution into full blown canonical Classical designs, and then the final flowering into abstract Classicism and the style that he was to make his own.
References
Colin Amery, Margaret Richardson & Gavin Stamp, Lutyens: The work of the English Architect 1869-1944, Hayward Gallery, London, 18 November 1981-31 January 1982, Arts Council of Great Britain 1981.
Jane Brown, Lutyens and the Edwardians: an English architect and his clients, Viking 1996.
Arthur Stanley George Butler, The Architecture of Sir Edwin Lutyens, Vols I-III, Country Life 1950.
James Stevens Curl & Susan Wilson, The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, Oxford University Press 2015.
Jeroen Geurst, Cemeteries of the Great War by Sir Edwin Lutyens, 010 Publication 2010.
Roderick Gradidge: Edwin Lutyens: architect laureate, Allen & Unwin 1981.
Andrew Hopkins and Gavin Stamp (eds) Lutyens Abroad: The work of Sir Edwin Lutyens outside the British Isles, British School at Rome at the British Academy 2002.
Christopher Hussey, The Life of Sir Edwin Lutyens, Antique Collectors Club 1953.
Peter Inskip, Edwin Lutyens, Academy Editions; St Martins Press 1986.
Robert Grant Irving, Indian summer: Lutyens, Baker and Imperial Delhi, Yale University Press 1981.
Mary Lutyens, To be Young: some chapters of autobiography, Corgi 1989.
Mary Lutyens, Edwin Lutyens, Black Swan 1991.
Clayre Percy and Jane Ridley (eds) The letters of Edwin Lutyens to his wife Lady Emily, Hamish Hamilton 1988.
Hugh Petter, The Lost Goths (unpublished thesis submitted to Portsmouth University, UK), 1989.
Hugh Petter, Lutyens in Italy: The Building of the British School at Rome, British school at Rome, 1992.
Gavin Stamp, Edwin Lutyens: Country Houses, Aurum 2001.
Charles Francis Annesley Voysey, ‘1874 and After’, “Architectural Reviewâ€, Sept 1931.
Lawence Weaver, Houses and Gardens by E.L. Lutyens, Antiques Collectors Club 1981.
