James Gibbs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

St Martin's-in-the-Fields, London, is the prototype of many New England churches.

James Gibbs (1682-1754) was one of Britain's most influential architects. His first public building was St-Mary-Le-Strand and he was also responsible for St Martin's-in-the-Fields in London, the Cambridge University Senate House, the nave of All Saint's, Derby - now Derby Cathedral, and the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford.

James was born to a Roman Catholic family in Aberdeen and studied at Marischal College there, and in Rome under Carlo Fontana. He came to London in 1710, having attracted the notice of the Earl of Mar while abroad. Among Gibbs' first commissions was an addition for King’s College, Cambridge. Mar attached Gibbs's name among the list of architects to be responsible for the new churches to be built under the Act for Fifty New Churches.

The Radcliffe Camera, Oxford

The circular Radcliffe Camera in Oxford (1739–49) is usually considered Gibbs's finest design; it won him an honorary degree of Master of Arts.

At Twickenham he designed the pavilion at Orleans House, called the Octagon Room for a Scottish patron, James Johnston (1643 – 1737) Secretary of State for Scotland, about 1718. It is the only part of the grand house and grounds that has survived.

Gibbs published a folio of his designs, his Book of Architecture in 1728, and in 1732 the Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture that became part of every carpenter-builder's repertory in the English-speaking world. Gibbs created numerous designs for funeral monuments, often collaborating with the sculptor Michael Rysbrack. In 1735, Gawen Hamilton painted A Conversation of Virtuosis...at the Kings Arms that included Gibbs and Rysbrack, along with other artists who were instrumental in bringing the Rococo style to English design and interiors: George Vertue, the engraver and biographer of artists; Hans Hysing; Michael Dahl; William Thomas; the Rococo engraver Joseph Goupy; Matthew Robinson; Charles Bridgeman the landscape gardener; Bernard Baron; John Wootton; and the painter (National Portrait Gallery).