Curzon Street Baroque

Curzon Street Baroque is a 20th-century inter-war Baroque revival style. It manifested itself principally as a form of interior design popular in the homes of Britain's wealthy and well-born intellectual elite. Its name was coined by the English cartoonist and author Osbert Lancaster, as Curzon Street in Mayfair was an address popular with London high society.Oscar Wilde mentions the street in four of his works: in ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'', Lord Henry Wotton lives on Curzon Street; in ''Lady Windermere's Fan'', the notorious Mrs. Erlynne lives at 84A Curzon Street; in ''Lord Arthur Savile's Crime'', Lady Clementine Beauchamp lives on Curzon Street; and in ''An Ideal Husband'', Lord Goring lives on Curzon Street. While previous forms of Baroque interior design had relied on French 18th-century furnishings, in this form it was more often than not the heavier and more solid furniture of Italy, Spain, and southern Germany that came to symbolise the furnishings of new fashion.

While in vogue, roughly between 1927 and 1939, Curzon Street Baroque was also disparagingly known as "Buggers' Baroque" or "Decorators' Baroque".Calloway, pp.44–47 This was, according to author Jane Stevenson, because "a statistically implausible number of important men and women, and their decorators in the interwar arts, were gay". Among them were many of the leading writers, poets, and designers who used and promoted the style.

Naissance

True Baroque architecture, internal and external, employs architectural drama and surprise, chiaroscuro (light and shadow) pulse and a diversity of fanciful and joyous shapes and curves. However, Baroque has never been truly to the British taste. Having evolved as a derivative form of Renaissance architecture, in mainland Europe, in the mid-17th century, it made a brief appearance in Britain, at the beginning of the 18th century. It was pioneered in Britain, most notably, by Sir John Vanbrugh with his three principal projects Blenheim Palace, Castle Howard, and Seaton Delaval. Of these three monumental houses, only the earliest, Castle Howard, employs the true fanciful style of Baroque seen in mainland Europe; the remaining two rely heavily on mass and chiaroscuro to display their baroque qualities. In Britain, the style soon fell from fashion, and by the 1760s was replaced by the more serious and severe Neoclassical architecture. Osbert Lancaster put the British dislike of Baroque down to a national "ill-concealed dislike" of "cleverness", a virtue essential for any successful Baroque architect.

As a revival style, Baroque made a brief reappearance at the beginning of the 20th century, but in a confused form known as Edwardian Baroque architecture. As a revived form of interior decoration, it really dates from the 1924 publication of Sir Sacheverell Sitwell's book ''Southern Baroque Art'', which concentrated on the ornate Baroque style then regarded as vulgar and excessive. Charlish Sitwell with his two siblings, Edith Sitwell and Osbert Sitwell, known collectively as the Sitwells, formed an identifiable literary and artistic clique around themselves in London during the period 1916 to 1930. The book's publication sparked an artistic reevaluation of the style. The painter Rex Whistler developed a Baroque influence to his work, while the society photographer Cecil Beaton has been described as full of "Baroque playfulness." This influence was soon picked up by the leading high society decorators of the period, who developed a pared-back 20th-century version of Baroque. Osbert Lancaster, a satirist, author, and cartoonist, then named it Curzon Street Baroque (Curzon Street being one of London's smartest addresses).

Often mixing antique and modern furniture in the same room, Curzon Street Baroque, has been described as a rejection of Modernism. However, as a reformation style, it was more a rejection of the dark and cluttered Victorian style. The opinion of Victorian Architecture and style was at an all-time low, with Osbert Lancaster's fellow wit and contemporary, PG Wodehouse, stating: "It is pretty generally admitted that few Victorians were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks." Curzon Street Baroque certainly avoided the straight clean lines of Modernism and the dark woodwork of the Victorian era in favour of curves of "overwrought iron and Knole sofas, forests of twisted baroque candlesticks and pickled-oak occasional tables with the early southern-German look inspired by the arty Sitwells." Walls were painted pastel colours, often a shade of green, and where the patrons could afford it, at least one "feature panel" was installed in a room. These were large paintings or murals, often let into the newly repainted panelling, often in the form of ''trompe-l'œil''. In the dining room at Sandringham, the panels were valuable tapestries given by King Alfonso XII of Spain.

Externally, with a few exceptions, the revival style was less popular. However, the architect, Clough Williams-Ellis, would adopt a colourful Northern Italianate pastiche Baroque theme as the style for the design of Portmeirion. The late 17th-century Upton House was remodelled by the architect Percy Morley Horder between 1927 and 1929 for the 2nd Lord Bearsted with some external baroque motif, but chiefly the Baroque was confined to the interior.

Components of the style

According to Osbert Lancaster, key constituents and elements of Curzon Street Baroque included Venetian hand-painted furniture and art in the style of Canaletto (often of doubtful provenance). An ecclesiastic