Augustus Pugin - 19th century architect who dreamed of living in the Middle Ages and created Big Ben

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the era of the industrial revolution, in the era of smoking cars and exhibitions of industrial achievements, he strove to return England to the Middle Ages, and his contemporaries - to genuine Christianity. A romantic and dreamer, Augustus Pugin had a hand in the creation of the key buildings of Great Britain, not wanting in return neither fame nor wealth …

The thirties of the XIX century - the time of revolutions: political, cultural, scientific … Passion for socialist ideas permeates society from bohemians to semi-literate workers and slum dwellers. London is choking on the smog caused by factories and factories. New inventions appear every day, if not every second, some of which are destined to change the course of history, others - to remain in obscurity. Cars are advancing - eerie, smoking, rumbling …

The art of that time was dominated by eclecticism, a bulky, pretentious Georgian style, references to historicism and exotic motives. London architecture existed, in fact, in two forms: it was the luxurious houses of the rich with stucco and columns - and the ugly crowded dwellings of the poor. Many architects, engineers and artists were looking for a way out of this situation, trying to solve the problem of the architectural appearance of Great Britain. But few of them were as radical as Augustus Pugin.

Augustus Weltby Northmore Pugin was born in 1812 into the family of the French emigrant Charles Auguste Pugin, an architect, educator, graphic artist and decorator who considered the French Revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy to be the main tragedy of his life. Pain for a beautiful, but lost past, he carried through his entire life - along with his artistic talent, he inherited, but his son interpreted it differently.

Augustus Pugin grew up overseeing his father's work as an illustrator for books on Gothic architecture.

At the age of fifteen, he took part in the creation of furniture for Windsor Castle. Then there was the decoration of the scenery at the Royal Theater in Covent Garden, an attempt to organize his own furniture workshop, a debt prison, a happy marriage, the death of his parents, wife and … conversion to Catholicism.

It was a bold move in Protestant England, where, according to anecdote, same-gender bonding is preferable to marriage with a Protestant. But Pugin did not stop at converting to Catholicism.

At twenty-four, he published at his own expense the historical and philosophical work "Contrasts" (or "Oppositions"). He compared not only Gothic architecture with modern architecture, but also Protestantism with Catholicism, suggesting that his contemporary decline in morals is directly related to the "tragedy of the Reformation."

He considered architecture to be an expression of the spiritual qualities of people, and if culture and religion determine the appearance of buildings, then the opposite is also true - an environment in the style of the pre-reform period will mystically form a new, pure, highly spiritual personality and change society.

The Industrial Revolution, with its fuming machines and destitute workers, he considered a direct consequence of the Reformation. Simply put, Augustus Pugin proposed to completely rebuild Great Britain in accordance with medieval principles and thereby return humanity to the right path.

In his desire to return to the Middle Ages, Pugin was close to the Nazarene order (a community of German artists living in accordance with the order of medieval craft workshops) and the Pre-Raphaelite movement, but approached the problem at the same time both naively and on a larger scale.

For all the gravitation towards historicism, Pugin believed that technical elements, supporting structures, nails and other fasteners should not be decorated and hidden - on the contrary, in medieval architecture they played both a functional and decorative role.

For himself, his second wife and children, he built a famous Gothic house overlooking the sea. It is said that from the library window he often saw ships in distress and was always ready to come to the rescue in his boat "Carolina". "One should live for the sake of architecture and a boat," he said. For the injured sailors, Pugin organized a shelter - at his own expense.

He could give his shoes to a beggar and continue on foot, worked like a man possessed, but did not chase after money and did not seek to make useful acquaintances. In realizing his dreams of truly Christian architecture, Augustus Pugin aspired to be a true Christian himself.

Despite the seeming absurdity - forward into the past! - his views resonated with Catholics in need of their own churches in England. By the age of thirty, he had designed the form and interior decoration of at least twenty-two churches and three cathedrals.

In the 1830s, Pugin worked with the architect Charles Barry to design the British Parliament building in London - he created more than a thousand drawings of interior decoration.

Pugin, an excellent draftsman, designed ornaments for stained glass windows, textiles, tiles, wallpaper - all with a distinct medieval touch.

In 1851 he was working on the Medieval Courtyard for the World's Fair, but the main building in Augustus Pugin's life was ahead.

Charles Barry, who was carrying out the reconstruction of Westminster Palace after the fire in 1852, turned to Pugin for help - one of the towers was not working. Just before that, Pugin had spent several months in an asylum for the mentally ill, where he ended up as a result of a "nervous breakdown" - this vague phrase hides the consequences of many years of hard work, and depression due to the death of his second wife, and memory problems, and, according to According to some researchers, the neuro form of syphilis, which in England in those years was easy to get infected with. At the moment of enlightenment - or divine illumination? - Pujin sketched the silhouette of the clock tower …

He died at the age of forty, never seeing the embodiment of his plan and not knowing that his creation became a real "calling card" of Great Britain.

Augustus Pugin's legacy is a multitude of Catholic churches throughout England, philosophical texts about architecture and religion, significant ideas in the field of construction and decoration, key buildings that have become British "brands" and two sons who continued his father's work.