Principios de diseño

In terms of major Thames developments, the design and construction of Westminster Bridge, considered in relation to its artistic representation within this chapter, was regarded as a significant feat of urban engineering and architecture which harked back to Roman precedents. Contemporary artistic focus on the bridge was exceptional in terms of artwork that featured the Thames, primarily because it was the first new bridge to be built in London in the eighteenth century.²³ The attention that the new Thames crossing attracted was redoubled a mile downstream during the nine-year construction of Blackfriars Bridge which opened in 1769. The success of these ambitious architectural projects suggested a potential for further enhancements to the capital and its river and stimulated commissioning bodies and architects to produce bold designs for new bridges. While some designs were purely visionary exercises designed to demonstrate architectural virtuosity on what was a topical subject, others were inspired by the controversial search for a worthy successor to the old London Bridge. The replacement of what was arguably London’s best known landmark was an

21 See for example Westminster Bridge with the Lord Mayor’s Procession on the Thames (1747) by Canaletto, YCBA: B1976.7.94.

22 Anon (1827), p. 22.

23 See Fox, C. (2009), p. 412.

undertaking of enormous magnitude. A new river crossing had to be emblematic of London as a progressive urban metropolis in images reproduced at home and abroad by the buoyant print market. Even architects’ plans were converted by artists into paintings, some of which were in turn published as printed images. The resultant imaginings of the monumental and extraordinary possibilities for river crossings appear to have captured the public imagination and fed into a demand for grand innovations and classical magnificence in harness with an urgent requirement for further Thames developments and improvements.

It was into this competitive arena that the architect, George Dance the Younger (1741-1825) introduced his magisterial design for a double bridge to replace the decaying old London Bridge. The proposal was a response to the demands of London’s town planning and the need to upgrade the City with a design that harked back to Roman classicism as well as looking to the future by incorporating new engineering initiatives.²⁴ Dance’s bridge was clearly influenced from the time he had spent in Italy and the printed and painted views William Daniell produced of the design contain elements of Italian vedute as developed by Canaletto, with echoes of works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) [see Fig. 59].²⁵ The scheme was also intended, in part, to commemorate the Battle of the Nile and to celebrate the state of the nation in general with crescent-shaped piazzas at either end, the existing monument to the Great Fire of 1666 occupying one with a new naval monument proposed for the other.²⁶ Revealed in a Select Committee report, Dance’s revolutionary proposal for a river crossing was a daring and attractive solution to bridging the Thames without impeding either river or road traffic. Such was the level of curiosity surrounding the scheme William Daniell translated it into an architectural perspective, showing the imagined scene as if viewed from the basket of a balloon.²⁷ The painted version [Fig. 58] was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1802.²⁸ Daniell’s visualisation of Dance’s proposal included the complete remodelling of the London Quays and Sufferance Wharves in a scheme evocative of the type of planned development advocated by Gwynn in his London and Westminster Improved. The scheme consisted of a pair of bridges, each with a drawbridge at the centre so that one or the other could be raised to let ships through while the land traffic was diverted to the alternative route. The panoramic and dramatic qualities of the image were not lost on its Georgian audience when in 1801, a painted simulation by R. C. Andrews of Dance’s original design became a popular attraction in itself, drawing crowds as part of a dramatic panorama installed at Sadler’s Wells Theatre where it was exhibited alongside ‘the usual performances’.²⁹ Dance’s scheme was both ambitious and elaborate, but Daniell’s painted and printed versions, and the surviving key to the Sadler’s Clarence presided over a competition for a suitable memorial. These included John Flaxman’s Colossal Statue of Britannia for Greenwich Hill and John Opie’s design for a Temple of Naval Virtue; see Hoock, H.

(2003), pp. 277-79 and Quilley, G. (2011), pp. 199-203.

27 This relates to Daniell’s series of pioneering dock paintings and prints discussed later in this chapter.

28 For the printed version see BM: G,13.22.

29 See Hyde, R. (1988), no. 36; Hyde, R., Hoole, J. and Sato, T. (eds) (1984), no. 12 and p. 17. The Sir John Soane’s Museum has a small watercolour of the scheme, see Hyde, R. (1999), pp. 30-31.

massive canal, with the scale of the proposed bridge emphasised by the vast hemi-cycles of its housing dominated by Wren’s Monument on the north bank which is balanced by the proposed obelisk to commemorate naval victories on the south, while curving flights of stairs descend to the water’s edge.³⁰ Such architectural extravagances hark back to the visionary Ponte Magnifico (1743) by Piranesi in which classical arches are shown built across an apparently limitless expanse of water [Fig. 59].³¹ But Daniell’s panoramic image of Dance’s bridge encapsulates the key elements that would characterise the reimagining of the river during the second half of the eighteenth century: the nation’s identification with imperial grandeur through monumental design forming part of the remodelling and improvement of the capital on a colossal scale.

Daniell’s commanding depiction of Dance’s visionary design for a new bridge across the Thames was produced within a period which had already generated elaborate plans motivated by the accepted need for the improvement and adornment of the river. It was as a student at the Royal Academy Schools that the future architect John Soane (1753-1837), together with Dance (his friend and colleague) produced a detailed plan for a grand ‘triumphal bridge’, a project for which he was awarded the Academy’s Gold Medal.³² The design was repeated in atmospheric watercolours produced for Soane in the 1790s by the draughtsman Joseph Michael Gandy (1771-1843) in which the bridge is introduced in a huge primeval landscape [Fig. 60].³³ Designed to be 360 metres long, with a wide central carriageway, side footways and immense frontispieces at the ends, Gandy has shown the bridge not spanning the Thames with a backdrop consisting of the chaotic topography of contemporary London, but set diagonally across what appears to be a vast river flowing over a plain. Dana Arnold has commented that ‘Soane’s design synthesises the complex meanings of a river crossing in a potent image of national glory and architectural magnificence’.³⁴ Certainly this sense of an intrinsically embedded patriotism was endemic in the design of bridges and significant Thames-side buildings that were proposed, and sometimes realised, throughout this period.

Such inherent connotations are further concentrated when the architect’s designs were processed by artists, or in the depictions of the actual construction process as it progressed from the initial stage of building through to ostentatious opening ceremony. Soane studied under Thomas Sandby when Sandby held the position of Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy Schools. Sandby had already produced his own design for A Bridge of Magnificence to be built at Somerset House, drawings of which he used to illustrate his professional lectures at the Royal Academy. His definitive architectural drawing of this elaborate bridge was exhibited there in 1781 [Fig. 61].³⁵ The Royal Academy itself was based on the Thames since the previous year, and Sandby’s proposal bore a distinct relationship with a new association between the centre of visual art and the Thames, especially in terms of magnificence in civic

30 See Key to a large painted version of George Dance the Younger's proposed double London Bridge, exhibited as a panorama at Sadlers Wells Theatre (c. 1800) engraved by R. C. Andrews, LMA: q6888794.

31 See Marshall, D. (2003), pp 321-352.

32 See Soane’s Design for a ‘Triumphal Bridge’ (1778) attrib. Dance, JSM: SM86/2/1 a-e; Stroud, D.

(1957), pp. 260-62; Darley, G. (1999), p. 12.

33 See Summerson, J. (1963), pp. 111-34.

34 Arnold, D. (ed.) (1999a), p. 86.

35 An alternative version drawn by an artist in the office of Samuel Ireland can be found in Ireland, S.

(1792), Vol. II.

architecture as well as in academic and imperial ideas.³⁶ Sandby considered London to be ‘the essence of pleasure and magnificence’ but he lamented that the overcrowding of buildings led to a dominance of function over form in a city where ‘business is more considered than pleasure’.³⁷ John Bonehill acknowledges that central to Sandby’s thought was ‘the design of grand civic buildings’ such as old Somerset House, especially ‘those that dominated the London skyline’ from its gardens; ‘these were the ideals that informed Sandby’s designs for a Bridge of Magnificence’.³⁸ Bonehill confirms that Sandby’s ‘drawings of the bridge were much admired by newspaper critics’ and notes the artist’s approving reference to Gwynn’s London and Westminster Improved. This is echoed in the text of Samuel Ireland’s Picturesque Views on the River Thames (1792) where the author effuses:

I have the pleasure of communicating to the public the annexed elegant design for a bridge [...] which if thrown across the Thames from the western extremity of Somerset-place, would [...] add a specimen of taste and magnificence to the public works of this great city, surpassing any thing it has yet received.³⁹