William Burges - Legacy and Influence

Legacy and Influence

On Burges's death in 1881, his contemporary, the architect Edward William Godwin, said of him that "no one of the century of this country or any other that I know of, ever possessed that artistic rule over the kingdom of nature in a measure at all comparable with that which he shared in common with the creator of the Sphinx and the designer of Chartres." But the Gothic Revival he championed with such force was in decline. Within twenty years his style was considered hopelessly outdated and owners of his works sought to eradicate all traces of his efforts. From the 1890s to the later twentieth century, Victorian art was under constant assault, critics writing of "the nineteenth century architectural tragedy", ridiculing "the uncompromising ugliness" of the era's buildings and attacking the "sadistic hatred of beauty" of its architects. Of Burges, they wrote almost nothing. His buildings were disregarded or altered, his jewellery and stained glass were lost or ignored, and his furniture was given away. The architectural historian Megan Aldrich writes, "He founded no school ... had few adherents outside the circle of his practice ... and trained no further generation of designers." In comparison with more prolific contemporaries, he completed relatively few works and lost many architectural competitions. Burges's collaborator, the artist Nathaniel Westlake, lamented "competitions are seldom given to the best man – look at the number poor Burges won, or should have won, and I think he executed only one."

Almost his sole champion in the years after his death was his brother-in-law, Richard Popplewell Pullan. Primarily an illustrator, as well as a scholar and archaeologist, Pullan trained with Alfred Waterhouse in Manchester, before joining Burges's office in the 1850s. In 1859, he married Burges's sister. Following Burges's death in 1881, Pullan lived at The Tower House and published collections of Burges's designs, including Architectural Designs of William Burges (1883) and The House of William Burges (1886). Burges's work did continue to attract followers in Japan. Josiah Conder studied under him, and, through Conder's influence, the notable Japanese architect Tatsuno Kingo was articled to Burges in the year before the latter's death.

From the later twentieth century to the present a renaissance has occurred in the study of Victorian art, architecture and design and Crook contends that Burges's place at the centre of that world, as "a wide-ranging scholar, an intrepid traveller, a coruscating lecturer, a brilliant decorative designer and an architect of genius," is again appreciated. Crook writes further that, in a career of only some twenty years, he became "the most brilliant architect-designer of his generation," and, beyond architecture, his achievements in metalwork, jewellery, furniture and stained glass place him as Pugin's only "rival as the greatest art-architect of the Gothic Revival."