William Richard Lethaby. His Life and Work 1857–1931 PDF
Preview William Richard Lethaby. His Life and Work 1857–1931
GODFREY RUBENS WILLIAM RICHARD LETHABY HIS LIFE AND WORK 1857-1931 The Architectural Press: London For Kelly William and Emma First published in 1986 by the Architectural Press Ltd, 9 Queen Anne's Gate, London SWiH 9BY © Godfrey Rubens, 1986 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Rubens, Godfrey William Richard Lethaby: his life and work 1857-1931· 1. Lethaby, W. R. 2. Artists—England—Biography. I. Title 709'. 2'4 N6797.L4/ ISBN o 85139 350 o All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Such permission, if granted, is subject to a fee depending on the nature of the use Designed by Peter Ward Imprint, the typeface used in this book, was designed at the Central School of Art and is based on Caslon Old Face Typeset by Stratatype, London Printed in Great Britain by Dotesios Printers Ltd, Bradford-on-Avon For Kelly William and Emma First published in 1986 by the Architectural Press Ltd, 9 Queen Anne's Gate, London SWiH 9BY © Godfrey Rubens, 1986 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Rubens, Godfrey William Richard Lethaby: his life and work 1857-1931· 1. Lethaby, W. R. 2. Artists—England—Biography. I. Title 709'. 2'4 N6797.L4/ ISBN o 85139 350 o All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Such permission, if granted, is subject to a fee depending on the nature of the use Designed by Peter Ward Imprint, the typeface used in this book, was designed at the Central School of Art and is based on Caslon Old Face Typeset by Stratatype, London Printed in Great Britain by Dotesios Printers Ltd, Bradford-on-Avon ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the following people for their help in the preparation of this book: Dorothy Bosomworth, Peter Banham, Alan Crawford, Derek Dyne, Roger Gill, Joan Heddle, John Harvey, Margaret Holden-Jones, the late Priscilla Johnston, Roger Keene, the late Sidney Loweth, Elizabeth Nicholson, John Myers, David Martin, the Hon. Sara Peel, Thomas Paine, Roger Powell, the staffs of the RIB A Library and Drawings Collection, Celia Rooke, the late H. V. Molesworth Roberts, Andrew Saint, Elsie Seatter, the late Arthur Llewellyn Smith, Roger Thorne, the late Lawrence Tanner, Lynne Walker and A. B. Waters. I am particularly grateful to John Brandon-Jones for his generous loan of material and to Frances Stevens for her patient advice and faith in the subject without which this study could hardly have been completed. Much of the research was carried out with the aid of a University of London Leon Fellowship. 7 SOURCES OF I L L U S T R A T I O NS 1 Bodleian Library; 2,3 Author; 4 St Anne's Museum, Barnstaple; 5,6 Author; 7,8,9,10 Private collec- tion; 11 Building News, vol. 36,1879, p. 170; 12 The Architect, vol. 22,1879, p. 334; 13 Building News, vol. 36, 1879, p.268; 14 The Builder, vol. 14.1, 1881, p. 138; 15 Author; 16,17,18 Private collection; 19 Author; 20 Building News, vol. 42, 1882, p.204; 21 Private collection; 22 R.A.; 23 Building News, vol. 41, 1881, p.328; 24,25,26 Private collection; 27 The Architect, vol. 28, 1882, p.329; 28 R.I.B.A. Drawings Collection; 29,30 R.A. ; 31,32,33 Private collection; 34 Andrew Saint; 35 V&A; 36 Martin Harrison; 37 V&A; 38 A.I.S. 1st ser. no. 137, The Architect, vol. 39,1888, p.39; 39 Private collection; 40 V&A; 41 Täte Gallery; 42 R.I.B.A. Library; 43 Author; 44 A.I.S. 2nd ser., nos 328, 329, The Architect, vol. 45, 1891, p.115; 45 Private collection; 46 V&A; 47 A.I.S. 2nd ser., no. 230, The Architect, vol. 43, 1890, p. 327; 48 Private collection; 49 A.I.S. 2nd ser., no.195, The Architect, vol. 43, 1890, p.87; 50 A.I.S. 2nd ser., no. 293, The Architect, vol. 44, 1890, p.335; 51 Coalbrookedale Museum; 52,53 Author; 54 N.M.R.; 55,56,57,58,59 V&A; 60 Private collection; 61 A.I.S. 2nd series, no. 164, The Architect, vol. 42, 1899, p.299; 62 Studio, vol. ix, 1896, P.J99; 63 N.M.R.; 64 Studio; 66 Author; 67 John Brandon-Jones; 68 R.I.B.A. ; 69 John Brandon-Jones; 70 Author; 71 R.I.B.A. : 72,73 John Brandon-Jones; 74 Author; 75 John Brandon-Jones; 76 R.I.B.A.; 77,78,79,80 John Brandon-Jones; 81 Author; 82 John Brandon- Jones; 83 Joan Hoddle; 84 Andrew Saint; 85 Author; 86,87,88,89,90 John Brandon-Jones; 91 Author; 92,93,94,95,96,97,98 John Brandon-Jones; 99 R.I.B.A. ; 100 H. Muthesius; 101W. Curtis Green; 102 J. Ruskin; 103,104 Architectural Review; 105 Private collection; 106 Author; 107,108,109 John Brandon- Jones; 110,111 Elsie Seatter; 112,113,114 Author; 115,116 J. Ruskin; 117 J. Ruskin; 118 R.I.B.A; 119,120 John Brandon-Jones; 121 Author; 122,123 Sources unknown; 124 Author; 125 Private collection; 126,127,128,128,129 V&A; 130,131,132 Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth; 133 Author; 134 Private collection; 135 L.C.C. Technical Education Board Gazette; 136,137 Author; 138,139 Private collection; 140,141 Täte Gallery; 142,143 Author. 9 CHAPTER ONE EARLY YEARS PLATE i. Barnstaple, Devon. Watercolour by G. Shepherd, 1823. Lethaby wrote, 'I have found a view of my own town of Barnstaple - a kind little town seated in a smiling "landskip". There is something in these birthplaces and cradle homes which attacks our very heart strings, and I never look at this town of mine from the outside without that Ό Jerusalem" feeling.' 12 WILLIAM RICHARD LETHABY WAS BORN ON 18 JANUARY 1857 IN BARNSTAPLE, A NORTH DEVON TOWN BUILT IN A WIDE FERTILE VALLEY AT THE UPPER END OF A TIDAL ESTUARY, WHERE THE rivers Taw and Torridge meet and flow westward into the Bristol Channel. Long after, remembering his birthplace, Lethaby wrote : The vision of the Town that opened to one approaching it by Sticklepath was of touching beauty, it remained so still as I remember it . .. In the olden days, the narrow thread of causeway and bridge directed over the river towards the lowly gray town, out of which rose the sharp lead spire, the front fringed with masts and the background of pleasant hills must have been a scene of extraordinary beauty even for fair England.1 Up to the middle of the nineteenth century, the town had altered little. For centuries it had been the market town and principal port of north Devon, with a thriving shipbuilding industry and a worldwide commerce. Everything, including, in the latter days, the products of the new manufacturies - lace, pottery and furniture - had to travel by sea from one of the four quays. At the time of Lethaby's birth, the old commercial ways were changing. A series of events, principally the coming of the railway, was to transform the old town and its way of life. It was a slow process, hardly discernible while Lethaby was a boy; but in the end the railway strangled the port and it is not easy nowadays to imagine Barnstaple as Lethaby remembered it, with a Customs House and Bonded Stores on the Quay. I remember the sea-going ships and the romance they gave to the Town. Fine vessels were built ; on the slips close to the West end of the Bridge. I can recall the noble frames and the hammering of caulking and the excitement of being on a barque, I think when she was launched about sixty years ago. After launching they were brought to Queen Anne's Quay where final fitting out was done. Two memories come back to me ; leaning against a big vessel, floating on the tide I found that after a time she gently swung away from the Quay, which gave me a notion of the slow action of forces which I have never forgotten. Again I asked a sailor of this or another ship where they were going. 'Valparaiso', he replied. On some festival, the Queen's Birthday or the like, the ships along the Quay had out all their bunting and as the evening came, hoisted lanterns. As seen from Anchor Wood bank it was a joyous sight.2 The Lethabys could trace their ancestors in Devon back to the sixteenth century, and some believed beyond, to the Dane Hubba son of Lethabrook, who had landed at nearby Appledore in the tenth century. Many, like the boy's grandfather William Lythaby - there are several spellings of the name - were *3 WILLIAM RICHARD LETHABY PLATE 2. Richard Pyle Lethaby, Lethaby's father. H EARLY YEARS agricultural labourers, but one of his sons, Richard Pyle Lethaby (Lethaby's father) became a skilled craftsman. How he learned the carving and gilding trade is unknown, but it seems most likely to have been in London where there were other members of the family in the wood business with whom he could have lodged. Perhaps it was there that he met and married Mary Crago, in about 1850. The date is uncertain because the marriage was not registered, perhaps because it took place in a Bible Christian Chapel. In March 1851, presumably seeking lodgings, he travelled to Pilton, a village on the outskirts of Barnstaple3 where, in the following December, his wife bore him a daughter, Emmeline Shapcot.4 From a formal photograph taken on a visit to Exeter, and also from his obituary,5 we get a clear impression of him (Plate 2). He was the very pattern of the respected and respectable working man, so much admired by his sober fellow Victorians - authoritarian, unbending, devout, a fine and careful craftsman with a head for business, but a Radical nevertheless. Sometime before 1850 he had joined the Bible Christian Society, whose rules, though modelled on those of the Wesleyans, were far more restrictive and puritanical. Soon he was a lay preacher and trustee of both the first Bible Christian Chapel, opened in 1885, and the second, a new church. Pouring in his energies as he did, he must have figured large in the affairs of the Society and contributed much to the successful effort to establish it in Barnstaple. From its earliest days it had been a folk church; though it embraced yeoman farmers and small shopkeepers, its chief strength came from 'Hodge', the country labourer, society's poorest class. Gradu- ally transformed from a revivalist movement, it became an institutionalized church with an established order of service, but was still characterized by extempore prayers and sermons with violent images of damnation, hell-fire and revelation. Its main difference, which set it at first sharply apart from the orthodox Methodist Connexion, was that its members, like the Primitive Methodists, were actively involved in radical politics. When the Barnstaple Liberal League was founded, after the Second Reform Bill had given the vote to the majority of working men, Richard Pyle Lethaby was elected to the committee and played a part in the successful attempt to clean up parliamentary elections, then corrupt affairs run on 'beer, bribes and intimidation\6 Throughout the years that Richard Pyle lived in the town he worked for John Ley, a carver and gilder, whose house and workshop were on the original quay. In about i860 Ley opened a fine art gallery, where he sold ornamental gilt frames of every kind and 'the best selection of engravings and chromo- lithographs'.7 A few years later the young Richard (who was known as 'Willem' in the early days), must have been a frequent visitor and have come to know at least something of popular art. It is tempting to think that it may have been here that he first met Alexander Lauder, his future employer, when he came seeking a frame for his latest painting. By then Richard Pyle had become foreman and may have carried on the business after Ley's death, for, at his own, he left £800 - no small sum even for a skilled craftsman. In the early years of their marriage the Lethaby s had lodged with the Leys at 2 The Strand, but by !5
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