ARCHITECTURE susceptible of a great deal of original treatment based on Renaissance elements. As an example, we may cite a street front built some twenty years later by another academician-architect; viz., the offices of the Chartered Accountants in the City, by Mr J. Belcher, A.R.A. More dignified and more monumental than New Zealand Chambers, more original than the School Board Offices, this front contains some details and a general treatment which may be said to be absolutely new; it affords another example of a piece of street architecture which attracted a great deal of attention, and has had an effect
Fio. 2.—New Zealand Chambers. (li. Norman Shaw, R.A.) quite disproportionate to its size and importance as a building; and it gives a general measure of the progress of the “ free classic ” idea. During the last decade of the century “free classic” has been almost the recognized style in English architecture, and has been illustrated in many town halls and other large and important buildings, among which the Imperial Institute is a prominent example. Concurrently with this tendency towards a free classic style there has arisen another movement which has had a considerable influence already on English archi™rt*,Iied lecture, and which will probably have a further influence in the future, viz., an increased perception of the importance of decorative arts—sculpture, painting,
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mosaic, ifcc.—in alliance with architecture, and of the architect and the decorative artist working together and in harmony. This is no more than what has long been understood and acted on in France, but it has been a new light to modern English architecture, in which, until a comparatively recent period, decorative painting was hardly thought of, and decorative sculpture, where it was introduced, was too often, or indeed generally, the mere work of some trading firm of masons. But of late years sculpture has taken a far more prominent place in connexion with architecture ; it has become a habit with the best architects to rely largely on the introduction of appropriate and symbolic sculpture to add to the interest of their buildings, and to associate with them eminent sculptors, who, instead of regarding their work only in the light of isolated statues or groups for the exhibition room and the art gallery, are willing to give their best efforts to produce high-class sculpture for the decoration of an architectural design which forms the framework to it. Notice should be taken, however, of another movement in English architecture during the closing years of the 19th century. Reference has already been made to one idea ideal. which prompted the culture of the “ Queen Anne ” type of architecture : that it presented a simple vernacular of construction and detail, in which solid workmanship was a more prominent element than elaboration of what is known as architectural style. To a small group of clever and enthusiastic architects of the younger generation it appeared that this idea of reducing architecture to the common-sense of construction might be carried still further; that as all the revivals of styles since the Renaissance had failed to give permanent satisfaction and had tended to reduce architecture to a learned imitation of the work of former epochs, the real chance for giving life to architecture as a modern art was to throw aside all the conventionally accepted insignia of architectural style — columns, pilasters, cornices, buttresses, etc.—and to begin over again with mere workmanship—wall-building and carpentry — and trust that in process of time a new decorative detail would be evolved, indebted to no precedent. The building artisans, in fact, were collectively to take the place of the architect, and the form of the building to be evolved by a natural process of growth. This was a favourite idea also with William Morris, who insisted that mediaeval art—the only art which he recognized as of any value (Greek, Roman, and Renaissance being alike contemptible in his eyes)—was essentially an art of the people, and that in fact it was the modern architects who stood in the way of our having a genuine architecture of the 19th century. Considering how much of merely formal, conventional, and soulless architecture has been produced in our time under the guidance of the professional architect, it is impossible to deny that there is an element of truth in this reasoning; at all events, that there have been a good many modern architects who have done more harm than good to architecture. But when we come to follow out this reasoning to its logical results, it is
