William Richard Lethaby
Blois (1882)
Tate
William Richard Lethaby was born at Barnstaple in 1857. After he had worked for a few years in architects offices in Devonshire and the Midlands he was selected by Norman Shaw to be his Chief Assistant in what it was the busiest office in England.
In the country his work had been partly for farm houses and farm buildings while in London it was for the most important public and the most magnificent private buildings.
He felt this contrast more acutely as he grew older; in middle life the main problem before architects appeared to be: How is the large important building of today to retain the honour and dignity of the small and unimportant?
He was the pioneer in England of modern architectural criticism.
At the age of 39 he was appointed Principal of the Central School of Arts and Crafts on its foundation.
So, though his architectural drawings were known and famous among architects in the 1880s, he had been a landscape painter; the drawings and watercolours were made during summer holidays, in great numbers, and then put in a drawer at once and not shown.
The exhibition showed the least known activity of a man who did more than most to influence the thought of today.
