Own work: The Temple of Bacchus, Stowe

     Of late I've been rather interested in garden structures, such as follies and banqueting houses, and, slightly tangential, to that the influence English garden structures, such as those by Vanbrugh and Kent had on French Neo-classicists such as Claude-Nicholas Ledoux.  I'm particularly drawn to the over-scaled and dramatic architecture of Sir John Vanbrugh.

     Here is my interpretation of a now lost building by Vanbrugh - The Temple of Bacchus that once stood in the gardens at Stowe, in Buckinghamshire.  It was built in 1719 for Viscount Cobham and survived until the 1920s when it was demolished for the school chapel designed by Sir Robert Lorimer.  I accidentally discovered a photographic illustration of the temple in a book in the horticultural library at Aberglasney.  It was my first I encounter with the building and I was very intrigued - it had drama and heft.  A quality of presence and mystery.  It was, I thought, a suitable subject for a painting, but could find very few other illustrations of the temple, and those were of poor quality or too small.  However I wasn't to be deterred, and so here then, based on those meagre resources, is my evocation of a lost part of our architectural history, our patrimony.  Mixed media, 23 x 46 cms.