Holland Park Living
William Kent (1685—1748)
William Kent came from a poor family in Bridlington. In fact, although he became an eminent designer – of furniture and gardens as well as buildings – he was almost illiterate. From his early twenties he was in Rome studying painting. He fell in with Lord Burlington, who was in Italy to study Palladian architecture, and they became close friends. Burlington brought Kent back to England with him in 1719. In 1727 (at Burlington’s expense) Kent published Designs of Inigo Jones, a book of Inigo Jones’ designs for buildings on Palladian lines. Inigo Jones, the most famous 17th century English architect, had been the first enthusiast of Palladio a century earlier. (Most of the designs attributed to Inigo Jones in Kent’s book were in fact by Jones’ pupil, John Webb.)
Kent did not turn his hand to architecture until he was into his forties. Burlington used his influence to have Kent appointed Master Carpenter to the Board of Works in 1726, and Master Mason and Deputy Surveyor in 1735.
His masterpiece was Holkham Hall in, Norfolk, which he designed with Burlington’s help. Kent was not as fanatical a Palladian as his aristocratic mentor. He was happy to produce commissions in Gothic as well as classical styles. His interiors and furniture were often gilded and richly carved in the Italian Baroque style. The house he designed at 44 Berkeley Square is famous for having the most ingenious and spectacular staircase in London.
He is more important as a landscape gardener than as an architect. He virtually invented the English landscape garden with its carefully cultivated appearance as a natural landscape. Rousham in Oxfordshire is the only one of his gardens which remains as he designed it. Partly due to his influence new country houses were designed to be part of the landscape, rather than to dominate it.
Between 1750 and 1759 he designed Horse Guards, in London, which was built by John Vardy after his death.
