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Was there a George VI style? Now that the story of British architecture and design in the twentieth century is less often distorted by over-emphasis on the modern movement, the variety and quality of what was produced can be appreciated afresh. Alan Powers argues that new stylistic terms are needed for mid-century design, among them the concept of a 'George VI style'
Apollo, Oct, 2004 by Alan Powers
Writing under his pseudonym, Peter F. Donner, in the Architectural Review in November 1941, Nikolaus Pevsner opened by stating that 'Every phase in history has its style permeating all its productions, whether of fashion or finance, of agriculture or architecture. Wherever you take a cross-section, you find a style of the day--complex of course, yet a style.' (1) On this occasion, Pevsner was examining changes in English architecture during the previous twenty years, and acknowledging how subtle these could be. Without defining what style emerged from the process, he indicated how the influence of modernism had affected even the development of as traditional an architect as Sir Edwin Cooper, illustrating the transition between Cooper's Marylebone town hall of 1912 and the library beside it of 1938. (2) Under the cloak of anonymity, Pevsner was making a rare attempt to understand an area of architecture apart from the modern movement. (3)
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The validity of Pevsner's belief in the reality of the Zeitgeist has been challenged, notably by David Watkin in Morality and Architecture (1977), on the grounds that he used it as both a prescriptive and a predictive concept. This was often so, but the link between style and period still remains an irreplaceable diagnostic device for art history, without which important questions simply remain unanswered. Given the existence of a substantial lacuna in the stylistic mapping of the fine and decorative arts of Britain in the twentieth century, the present article offers a test case for a new definition of national style for Britain in the mid century, bringing to the foreground items of art and design that have indisputable significance in terms of their permanence and wide diffusion, but which have hitherto lacked any useful stylistic label.
For example, the British passport, to this day, carries on its cover an engraving of the royal arms created by Reynolds Stone (1909-79) in 1955 for Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO) that is a development of the one he engraved for the order of service of the Coronation in 1937 (Fig. 1). An enlarged version of the royal arms by the artist Rex Whistler (1905-44), drawn in 1939, was recently installed above the piazza entrance to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Both these examples show the persistence of a graphic style that is neither modernist nor Art Deco, but clearly widespread and enduring. They are examples of the hitherto unrecognised 'George VI style'. British postage stamps, coinage and banknotes, although redesigned many times, still show the enduring influence of this distinctive national period style.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Applying the King's name to the style, something accepted for periods up to 'Edwardian', but curiously not adopted for anything later, seems to provide an appropriate description for a national style more stylistically inclusive than modern, or even Art Deco, but which, if it accurately reflects its name, should have achieved its peak in the years between 1936 and 1952, and should, furthermore, show some evidence that the monarchy directly or indirectly influenced its character. I hope to demonstrate that these conditions are met.
The George VI style cannot include everything produced during these years, but following Wolfflin's method, we should outline some formal characteristics by which it can be recognised. It is orderly and restrained, linear, two dimensional, and uses clear colours. It is a selective form of classicism, with the majority of its references taken from the period of about 1770-1840. It relies on composition, using largely unornamented surfaces, with small incidents of ornament, or at times a small-scale over-all pattern. Stars and stripes are favoured, as are flower patterns. It seems to be centred on the graphic rather than the plastic arts.
Can it be shown that these characteristics emerged around 1937? Few styles come into being suddenly and fully formed, and the George VI style had antecedents even in the nineteenth century. Insofar as the style was an alternative to modernism, the terraces, crescents and squares of the Duchy of Cornwall estate in Kennington, south London, by the architects Adshead and Ramsey, built 1912-14, are an early instance. The royal connection is suggestive, since Sir Walter Peacock, the secretary to the Prince of Wales who steered the commission, was keen that it should be a 'royal estate' and chose accordingly to revive the late Georgian style, indicating an association between the Crown and what then stood as the avant-garde of English architecture, in reaction against both the Arts and Crafts and a more florid, less disciplined classicism. (4) It was mooted at the time that with a new King George, such an association was appropriate, but only under George VI did this style become dominant.
Among younger architects, Raymond Erith (1903-73) appeared most clearly to carry forward the example of Adshead and Ramsey. He and a few contemporaries, such as Donald McMorran (1904-65), Stephen Dykes Bower (1903-93) and Louis Osman (1914-96), are distinctive in that they had studied during the period when modernism was first current, and made a conscious decision to reject it. Erith was even the architect for a royal commission from the new King, for gate lodges to the Royal Lodge at Windsor Great Park (Fig. 3). Completed in 1940, they were bombed only a fortnight later. Erith's extreme architectural restraint was typical of his work up to the mid 1950s. The King apparently preferred something more decorative, and the rebuilding was carried nut by another architect, Sidney Tatchell.
