Marianne North Gallery

Description

This information is taken from the statutory List as it was in 2001 and may not be up to date.

1.

5028 ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS

Marianne North Gallery TQ 1876 10/11

II

2.

Opened 9 July 1882. Built to house a collection of 848 flower paintings by Marianne North painted between 1872 and 1885. Designed by the architect and architectural historian James Fergusson to illustrate his ideas on how Greek temples were lit, which he published in 1883 in his "The Parthenon" an essay on the mode in which light was introduced into Greek and Roman temples".

T-shaped plan, 2 storeys high. Red brick wall with stone dressings and pitched copper roof. Plain, brick-faced lower storey below a brick pilastered clerestory. The cross bar of the 'T' faces west and is 11 bays wide by 5, with a 4-bay stem extension back towards Kew Road. The pilasters support an entablature with heavily blocked cornice, pedimented at the gable ends.

The west front has a central, one-storey pedimented porch, to either side of which is a verandah with lean-to roof supported on slender bracketed cast-iron columns. The interior follows Fergusson's theory that "all Grecian Doric peristylar temples were lighted by opaions or clerestories". It comprises 2 linked spaces, both treated similarly. The lower part of the walls, above a dabo faced with different varieties of wood is completely covered with Miss North's paintings, richly decorated, which supports a simple cast-iron balcony protecting the pilastered clerestorey. Stencilled with Grecian motifs.

Listing NGR: TQ1868276431

Content

This is part of the Series: IOE01/2148 IOE Records taken by Adam Watson; within the Collection: IOE01 Images Of England

Rights

© Mr Adam Watson. Source: Historic England Archive

This photograph was taken for the Images of England project