Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/318

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Barry
312
Barry

carving. Pugin was practically the head of the remaining departments as well.

It is not surprising that, after Barry's appointment to be architect to the Houses of Parliament, the continued practice of Gothic design, the study of the existing examples from books and buildings, and the ardent advocacy of Gothic by his friend A. W. Pugin, should have so modified his taste that the simple grandeur of unbroken horizontal lines appeared to him to be ineffective and dull, and simplicity, even in classic buildings, was exchanged for richness. In most of his subsequent classic designs he exchanged the horizontal for the vertical element, and, with the exception of Bridgewater House, he broke up his skyline by end-attics, towers, and pinnacles. He endeavoured to get a mass rising from the centre of his buildings by a tower, dome, or otherwise, and cut up his façades with vertical lines. The Privy Council Office, Highclere House, and his design for Clumber sufficiently exemplify this change of taste. And at Halifax Town Hall he added a tower and stone steeple to an otherwise classic building.

He was, too, as brilliant a landscape gardener as he was an architect. Had he not been of the toughest fibre, of almost superhuman industry, and still thirsting for fame, he never could have carried out in his lifetime so great a national work as the Houses of Parliament. Architects alone can appreciate the powers required and the labour incident on such a vast and elaborate work, and he had to contend with conflicting opinions, some professional jealousy, visionary schemes, official interference, uneducated criticism in and out of parliament, and the rancour of enemies whose malignity has even pursued his fame beyond the grave. After the main work was done at the Houses of Parliament he moved to the Elms, Clapham Common, where he died of heart disease on 12 May 1860, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 22nd.

Amongst the many evidences of esteem his abilities and character called forth, his elections as member of the Royal Society and of the Travellers' Club may be mentioned, as well as his election to the associateship and membership of the Royal Academy of Arts of England, of the academies of St. Luke, Rome, St. Petersburg, Belgium, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark, and of the American Institute, the presentation to him by the Royal Institute of British Architects of the queen's gold medal for architecture; and, though last not least in the estimation of foreign architects, a flag on the Victoria tower was hoisted half-mast high on the day of his interment. The Emperor Nicholas said of the Houses of Parliament ‘it was a dream in stone,’ and Montalembert wrote a eulogium on the building.

He left five sons and two daughters—Charles, Alfred (assistant bishop in West London, formerly bishop of Sydney), Edward Middleton, R.A. [q. v.], Godfrey, and Sir John Wolfe, C.E. Charles and Edward followed their father's profession. Dame Barry, his wife, died in 1882. His most celebrated pupils were Robert R. Banks, G. Somers Clarke, and the present Mr. John Gibson.

M. Hittorff, who pronounced an oration on Sir Charles Barry and his works at the Imperial Institute of France 1 Aug. 1860, places him before Inigo Jones and Wren, and says: ‘It was only after he had built the Travellers' and Reform Clubs that we recognised in him a capacity truly unusual, joined to a quality rare amongst the English—I mean a predominant sentiment of art.’

In 1867, seven years after Barry's death, E. Welby Pugin published a pamphlet claiming for his father, Augustus W. Pugin, who died in 1852, the credit of being the art architect to the Houses of Parliament. A crushing reply to this was published by the Rev. A. Barry, and, fortunately, so many of Sir Charles's friends, pupils, and assistants were alive who had seen Sir Charles sketch out and elaborate the design, that the contention fell to the ground. The canopy of the throne in the House of Peers is the best piece of internal design, and it is only necessary to look at it to be confident that it was designed by a man reared in a classic school, even if we had not had G. Somers Clarke's statement that he saw Sir Charles draw it with his own hand. A complete list of his designs and executed works is published in his life by Dr. A. Barry.

[Sir D. Wyatt, On the Architectural Career of the late Sir C. Barry (Proc. R. I. B. A., 1859–60); Hittorff's Notice historique et biographique sur la vie et les œuvres de Sir C. Barry, 14 Aug. 1860, Paris 1860; E. W. Pugin, Who was the Art Architect of the Houses of Parliament? London, 1867; Rev. A. Barry's Life and Works of Sir Charles Barry, London, 1867; Rev. A. Barry's Architect of the New Palace at Westminster, London, 1868; Rev. A. Barry's Reply to Mr. E. Pugin, London, 1868; E. M. Barry's Correspondence with J. R. Herbert, R.A., London, 1868; Eastlake's History of the Gothic Revival, London, 1872; Fergusson's History of the Modern Styles of Architecture, London, 1873; The Travellers' Club House, London, 1839; César Daly, in Revue Générale de l'Architecture, Paris (The Travellers' Club, vol. i., 1840, The Reform Club, vol. xv., 1857, M. Hittorff's Address, vol. xviii., 1860); the correspondence in the Times, Standard,