James Gibbs

James Gibbs (1682-1754), British architect, Scottish by birth but trained in Rome and thereafter active in England for his entire career. He was one of the best and most individual architects working in Britain in the first half of the 18th century, and he had wide influence, through his publications as well as his buildings.

The son of an Aberdeen merchant, Gibbs was a Catholic and in 1703 arrived in Rome to train for the priesthood. However, he changed course and studied with Carlo Fontana, who was the leading architect in Rome and one of the most renowned in Europe. At a time when the architectural profession was still in its infancy in Britain, Gibbs’s thorough continental training set him apart from his contemporaries, both in the stylistic sophistication of his work and in terms of his all-round expertise (he built a great deal but always maintained admirably high standards). His professionalism more than compensated for the difficulties he sometimes encountered because of his religion (Catholics were politically suspect in England at this time).

Gibbs returned to Britain in 1708 and settled in London, where he had his first conspicuous success with the church of St Mary le Strand (1714-1717), notable for its refined Italianate detail. His most famous work is another London church, St Martin-in-the-Fields (1722-1726), but his masterpiece is arguably the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford (1737-1748). St Martin is remarkably original in its use of a steeple rising from the roof over the entrance portico; this arrangement was so widely imitated that the church ranks as the most influential ecclesiastical building of the 18th century. The Radcliffe Camera is a circular library of immense authority and dignity, with a dome that is one of the chief accents of Oxford’s spectacular skyline.

Gibbs’s other buildings are generally much less striking and original than these works, but they are invariably handsome and gracious. In addition to churches and public buildings, his output included a good deal of domestic architecture in town and country. He also designed numerous church monuments. Stylistically, he remained independent of the two main currents of architectural taste in England in the early 18th century—the highly charged Baroque idiom associated chiefly with Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh, and the rigorous good manners of the Palladians (see Andrea Palladio)—steering a middle course between these two poles. To a certain extent he continued the eclectic tradition of Wren, although Gibbs was a more polished designer than his great predecessor.

Gibbs published three architectural treatises: A Book of Architecture (1728), Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture (1732), and Bibliotheca Radcliviana (1747). The Book of Architecture is illustrated entirely with his own designs and was aimed at “such gentlemen as might be concerned in building, especially in the more remote parts of the country, where little or no assistance for designs can be procured”. It served this purpose extraordinarily well, becoming the most influential architectural pattern book of its time in the English-speaking world, not least in the American colonies.