A moving target? Pevsner and Architectural History, 1950-1974
John Newman
The near quarter-century (1951-74) during which Pevsner was bringing out the volumes of The Buildings of England was a period of intense activity in publications on English architectural history. Several series of surveys were launched, most notably the one which Pevsner himself edited, the Pelican History of Art. These provided an art-historical framework within which Pevsner's county-by-county inventorizing of individual buildings could be understood. Equally important were the group of biographical dictionaries which appeared in 1953-4, by John Harvey (medieval architects), Howard Colvin (architects 1660-1840) and Rupert Gunnis (sculptors 1660-1851). Victorian architecture was least well served, and here Pevsner at first, and to some extent always, depended on unpublished material made available to him by scholars. Full-scale monographs on leading Victorian architects did not begin to appear until the early 1970s, when Pevsner's work was nearing completion. Pevsner was disappointed that his own preoccupation with the analysis of style was reflected very little in the new literature. He took issue with John Harvey's attempt to identify the architects of numerous buildings erected in the middle ages, a period during which, he believed, the identity of craftsmen and designers had generally been a matter of no concern. On the other hand, Summerson's new stylistic category of 'Artisan Mannerism' to describe the sub-Jonesian classicism of the mid-17th century he, after some hesitation, gladly embraced. As for Victorian architecture, in spite of his chairmanship of the Victorian Society, he never overcame his almost moralizing dislike of what he saw as its overconfidence, vulgarity and stylistic confusion.
