Augustus Charles Pugin

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Augustus Charles Pugin, born Auguste Charles Pugin, (1768 or 1769 - 1832) was an Anglo-French artist and architectural draftsman. He was born in Paris, France, but his father was Swiss, and Pugin himself was to spend most of his life in England.

Pugin left France during the Revolutionary period for unclear reasons and entered the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1792. Shortly afterwards he obtained a position as an architectural draftsman with the architect John Nash. After considering and abandoning a career in architecture Pugin married and settled on a career as a commercial artist working primarily for publishers of illustrated books. He was a skilful watercolourist as well as an accomplished draftsman.

Pugin produced views of London, and plates for books about Westminster Abbey, Oxford and Cambridge universities and Winchester College. He often collaborated with other artists, among them Thomas Rowlandson. His later works included illustrations for Specimens of Gothic Architecture (1821-23), The Royal Pavilion at Brighton (1826), Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain (1826), Specimens of the Architectural Antiquities of Normandy (1827), Illustrations of the Public Buildings of London (1825 to 1828), and Paris and its Environs (1829 to 1831), and Examples of Gothic Architecture (1831). He also produced a book of furniture designs called Gothic Furniture, and assisted architects with detailing for their gothic designs. He ran a drawing school at his house in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury.

Pugin's developing interest in the gothic was to be magnified in the career of his son Augustus Welby Pugin, an architect who was the leading advocate of gothicism in 19th century England.