Texto 5.

HORACE WALPOLE, an 18th-century British author and collector, wrote that William Kent “was so much consulted by all who affected taste that nothing was thought complete without his assistance”. Kent was both prolific and polymathic—an architect, sculptor, painter, decorator and designer who dazzled Georgian Britain with his glitzy brand of Palladianism.

His surviving work includes the Treasury and Horse Guards buildings in London, and the interiors and furniture for some of Britain’s treasure houses, including Chiswick House in west London and Houghton Hall in Norfolk. The British artist was the originator of the English landscape garden and was responsible for the reintroduction of Palladian architecture to the country. The newly installed Hanoverian royal family became patrons: he was commissioned by Queen Caroline, wife of George II, to create a library at St James’s Palace, and by Frederick, the king’s eldest son, to design a royal barge. So why has Kent spent the better part of the two-and-a-half centuries since his death being largely disregarded?

A principal reason is that even during his lifetime he was divisive. William Hogarth, a satirical printmaker and a self-appointed champion of Britishness, despised the Italianate Kent. Hogarth called him a “contemptible dauber” and, in a popular print titled “The Bad Taste of the
Town”, showed “KNT” at the apex of the many follies unfurling over London. By the time Kent died in April 1748 the fickle eye of fashion had moved on to the neoclassicism of the Adam brothers and the Gothic revival. Obituaries were perfunctory: most took the same tone as the General Advertiser, which brusquely reported that Kent had died “of a Mortification of his Bowels”.

A new show aims to bring “Kentissime”—a term coined by Walpole—back to the limelight. The exhibition is the third in a collaborative series of monographs exploring Georgian “tastemakers”, organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Bard Graduate Centre in New York. It sketches out Kent’s career, from his humble start as the son of a rural joiner and his first job as a coach-painter in Hull. It shows how his fortunes changed at the age of 23 when benefactors sent him to Italy. He returned a decade later as a favourite of the third Earl of Burlington, a young, fantastically wealthy gentleman architect with a deep desire to become the central arbiter of British taste. It was under his patronage and influence that Kent became one of the most sought-after designers and landscape gardeners of the day.

The exhibition contains around 200 pieces of Kent’s work, including plans, never realised, for redesigned Houses of Parliament. It also includes examples of his gilt furniture, much loved by some, but loathed by detractors as exemplifying his showy, deceitful style. Julius Bryant, one of the show’s curators and a longstanding Kent fan, says it will challenge ideas of good taste. “People who come expecting English understatement are in for a nasty surprise,” he says. “He was in-your-face and brash. And his clients loved it.”

“William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain” is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London, until July 13th From the print edition: Books and arts Source: <http://www.economist.com/node/21599329/print> Accessed on March 20th (adapted.)