Architects

Name:

(Sir) Robert Smirke

Designation :

Architect

Date of Birth:

Year Only

Exact DOB:

08/05/1925

Year of Birth :

1780

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Date of Birth After (Year):

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DOB (2nd 'Or' Year):

Date of Death:

Year Only

Exact DOD:

08/05/1925

Year of Death:

1867

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Bio Notes :

Robert Smirke was born in London on 1 October 1780, the second of the five surviving sons and two daughters of Robert Smirke RA, artist and illustrator, and his wife Elizabeth Russell. He attended a private school in Aspley Guise in Bedfordshire where he showed an aptitude for drawing and was head boy. Through the recommendation of George Dance the younger, he entered the office of John Soane. Soane gave him, as he did all his pupils, a copy of Marc-Antoine Laugier’s ‘Essai sur l‘Architecture’ which was to have a profound influence on Smirke’s later architectural thinking. However Soane was temperamental and Smirke and they did not get on well with one another. Smirke left without completing his apprenticeship which Soane took as an insult.

To continue his training Smirke moved to the office of George Dance and then to the surveyor and measurer, Thomas Bush. In 1796 he began to study at the Royal Academy Schools and was awarded the Silver Medal that year and the Gold Medal in 1799.

In 1801 he and his brother Richard travelled abroad. After the Peace of Amiens they visited Paris, moving through the Southern Netherlands, Germany, and Austria and then travelled extensively in Italy and Sicily. Robert continued to Greece and drew many of the antiquities in the Peloponnese despite the dangers of that country at the time. He witnessed the removal of the Parthenon frieze but later admitted that he had missed an opportunity to be Lord Elgin’s artist. Athenian architecture made a great impression on the young Smirke.

Smirke returned to Britain in January 1805. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries as well as a member of the Architects’ Club that year. He also published ‘Specimens of Continental Architecture'.

Smirke enjoyed rapid success partly through his father’s connections and he was soon the favoured architect of the Tory establishment. A wide range of different types of commission followed many through his Tory connections which also brought him his official positions. He was introduced to Sir Robert Peel for whom he designed a town house in Whitehall and his country seat in Staffordshire. His close connection with Peel provoked the comment in the press ‘Sir Robert and his pet’.

In 1813 he was nominated as one of the three architect attached to the Office of Works, along with Soane and Nash. This appointment brought him a number of large commissions including the British Museum, the General Post Office, the Custom House and King’s College, The Strand. He became Surveyor to the Inner Temple in 1819 and from 1820 was Surveyor-General for the South Parts of the Duchy of Lancaster which brought him the Savoy estate development commission. He also secured many private commissions: in London the Covent Garden Theatre for the actor-manager John Phillip Kemble, (a very large commission and forced the work on Lowther Hall to be suspended); the Royal College of Physicians; four clubs and various churches; and outwith London thirty country house commissions (new build and alterations); and numerous country halls, including one in Scotland in Perth. Later in his life he supposedly turned down commissions for work costing less than £10,000.

When the Office of Works was re-organised in 1832 without the three ‘attached’ architects, he received a knighthood. Smirke held many gratuitous professional posts and received many plaudits He was Treasurer of the Royal Academy from 1820-1850. He was an honorary fellow of the RIBA and was awarded the Gold Medal in 1853.

Smirke’s success lay more in his reliability and ability to stay within budget than to his ability as an architect. He specialised in sound construction but was frequently called up to make good the deficient work of others (see for example the Carlisle Country Courts and the London Custom House). He was abreast with the latest technical development and was a pioneer of some for example he was the first British architect to use load-bearing foundations of lime concrete in measured quantities and was one of the first architects to use load-bearing cast-iron beams in domestic work (as opposed to industrial).

Smirke adhered to the Greek revival style throughout his career. Covent Garden Theatre was the first building in London in the pure Doric style and is thought to be the largest and earliest portico of this type in Britain (just ahead of Stark’s Portico on the Justiciary buildings in Glasgow). The theatre opened on 18 September 1809 to almost universal approbation. Soane did not agree. In his fourth lecture as professor of architecture at the Royal Academy he stated that one elevation had received all the interest at the expense of all the others and pointed out the deviation from ‘classical purity’. The Academy subsequently brought in rules to prevent future opinions on the work of living architects being expressed. The Academy was clearly supportive of Smirke as he was a royal Academician on 1811. Despite a brief public reconciliation, the acrimony between the two architects continued for some time. Soane identified the rationalist geometrical basis of Smirke’s neo-classicism and analytic approach to composition and accurately foresaw how porticoes could be applied indiscriminately as metaphors for temples.

Smirke admired the rational simplicity of the Greek style and used the Order of the Temple on Ilissus for his prototype many times over, especially in public commissions. The British Museum is probably the finest Greek Revival building in London. Colvin remarks: ‘only in the front of the British Museum did grandeur of scale and the novel combination of portico with a colonnade enable him to transcend his usual urbane banality and produce a masterpiece’. In designing country houses, Smirke was more flexible and Ionic or Doric porticos rarely dominate. He used castellated Gothic style in some cases – for example at Lowther and Eastnor, and Gothic, Tudor or Jacobean elsewhere. He tried to develop a simplified classical style for other houses – two Scottish house, Kinmount and Whittinghame being examples – which are described by Colvin as ‘cubical’ (described by Pugin as ‘New Square Style of Mr Smirke’) and perhaps his most important contribution at this time. Despite this he had a reputation as a conventional and uninspiring designer.

In 1819 Smirke had married Laura, daughter of Rev Anthony Freston, a nephew of Matthew Brettingham. They had one daughter. He had many pupils to assist in his busy office, including William Burn and Charles Robert Cockerell. He retired from practice in 1845. His brother Sydney who had joined the practice in 1815 then took over. Peel at this point appointed him a member of the Commission for London Improvements. In 1859 he resigned from the Royal Academy and retired to Cheltenham. He died there on 18 April 1867 at the advanced age of 87.

Bio Notes continued...

Additional Notes

The following private or business addresses are associated with this person:

Business Addresses2 classic

Address	Class	Date From	Date From Type	Date To	Date To Type	Notes
London England	Business

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The following individuals were employed or trained by this person (click on an item to view details):

Employees or Pupils2 classic

Name	Name Link	Date From	Date To	Position
William Doull	408006	Before 181		Apprentice
Charles Robert Cockerell	407879	In year 1809	In year 1810	Architect
Sydney Smirke	203723	In year 1819	In year 1827	Assistant
Sydney Smirke	203723	c. 1815	In year 1819	Apprentice
Henry Roberts	203154	c. 1825		Assistant

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This person was involved with the following buildings or structures from the date specified (click on an item to view details):

Buildings and Designs2 classic

Building Name	Date Started	Town, District or Village	City or County	Country	Notes
Bridge over the River Eden	c. 1801		Carlisle (near)	England	His design was chosen over that of Thomas Boyd.
Broomhall	In year 1808	Limekilns, Dunfermline	Fife	Scotland	Produced designs for the new wings (not executed)
Kinmount House	In year 1812	Annan	Dumfriesshire	Scotland	Original house and possibly gatepiers and quadrants at Main Drive
Monreith House	In year 1812		Wigtownshire	Scotland	Proposed scheme for refronting the house - porch added
Newton Don	In year 1817	Kelso	Roxburghshire	Scotland
Whittingehame House	In year 1817	Whittingehame	East Lothian	Scotland	House and probably stables and lodges
Strathallan Castle	In year 1818		Perthshire	Scotland	Partly encasing earlier house. Port cochere added to east front and interior work.
Perth County Buildings	In year 1819	Perth	Perthshire	Scotland	Original building (his assembly room in south wing survives)
Cultoquhey House	c. 1820		Perthshire	Scotland	Date given in Colvin. (Previously we had about 1816)
Strathallan Castle, Home Farm	c. 1820		Perthshire	Scotland	Possibly Smirke (HS)
Gosford House	In year 1821		East Lothian	Scotland	Unexecuted proposals for alterations and additions
British Museum	In year 1823	Bloomsbury	London	England	Original building
Kinfauns Castle	In year 1825	Kinfauns	Perthshire	Scotland	Original house and west lodge
Baldovan House	In year 1825	Baldovan	Angus	Scotland	House doubled in size
Luton Hoo	c. 1825		Bedfordshire	England	Alterations

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The following books contain references to this person:

Bib ref classic

Author	Title	Date	Publisher	Part	Notes
APSD	The Dictionary of Architecture		The Architectural Publication Society (8v 1852-1892)	ed Wyatt Papworth
Colvin, H M	A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840	1995	New Haven and London: Yale University Press	3rd edition
DNB	Dictionary of National Biography
Colvin, H (ed.)	History of the King\'s Works	1982			vi
Crook, J M	The British Museum	1972
Walker, Frank Arneil	South Clyde Estuary: An Illustrated Architectural Guide to Inverclyde and Renfrew	1986			p104
Farington, Joseph	Diary
Crook, J Mordaunt	The Career of Sir Robert Smirke	1961	D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford
Gow, Ian and Rowan, Alistair	Scottish Country Houses	1995			Chapter entitled 'Robert Smirke's Country house' by J M Crook

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The following periodicals contain references to this person:

Period ref classic

Periodical Name	Date Circ	Edition	Notes
RIBA Journal	1866-1867		Reprinted in the Builder xxv, 1867, 604
Newcomen Society Transactions	1965	xxxviii	1965-66
Country Life	1967/04/13
Architectural Review	1967/09
Journal of the London Society	1968/03

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The following archives hold material relating to this person:

Arc ref classic

Archive Name	Source	Source Cat No	Item Name	Notes
RIBA Drawings Collection	RIBA Archive, Victoria & Albert Museum	200010		Large collection of Smirke's drawings.
Archive	Yale Centre for British Art	201512		Continental drawings by Smirke.
Manuscripts	Bodleian Library	201552	Add.MS. 40605	Correspondence with Sir Robert Peel

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Basic Biographic Details

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Employees or Pupils2 classic

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Buildings and Designs2 classic

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