GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



foundation of the Royal Academy, offered no facilities at all for the 

 serious study of art, nor does Kent's real talent seem to have lain 

 in the direction of portraiture, historical, or religious painting, 

 the branches that he elected to follow, for apparently he had but 

 little success in any of them. He must, however, have shown 

 some earlier promise, for friends came forward and sent him to 

 study in Italy, and he is credited with having won the Pope's 

 annual prize for a painting, in 1713. Luckily for him, and for the 

 line of art that he ultimately made his own, he met Lord Burlington 

 in Rome, and with him returned to England in 1719. From that 

 time forward until his death in 1748, he seems to have made his 

 home entirely with the Earl, although he had several Court appoint- 

 ments, and many commissions, bringing him in an income of 

 600 per annum. 



Kent, as before stated, tried his hand at many branches of art, 

 including sculpture and architecture, as well as painting. Horace 

 Walpole, who had excellent opportunities for judging his capabilities 

 as a painter, pronounced him to be in that capacity below medio- 

 crity, and there is a statue of Shakespeare by him in West- 

 minster Abbey, that shows that, as a sculptor, also he was not 

 above it. But the late Phene Spiers, F.R.I.B.A., F.S.A., speaking 

 with professional authority, says : " Judging by his architectural 

 work at Chiswick alone, he was certainly an architect of no mean 

 capacity ; the design for the front of the villa, shows that he 

 possessed a good sense of proportion, and an accurate knowledge 

 of the Corinthian order, which he employed for the portico ; in 

 the double staircases of the north and south fronts, he displays 

 considerable originality, whilst in the scheme of his plan and the 

 decorative design of the interior, he certainly equals, if he does 

 not surpass, the work of his distinguished predecessor Palladio." 

 This is high praise, but it is not undeserved. Working as he did 

 at Chiswick, immediately under the eye of Lord Burlington, he 

 must have thrown himself enthusiastically into the scheme, and 

 have been in perfect accord with his patron, to achieve there so 

 successful a result. The directing taste, however, as well as the 

 first inception of the whole, was Burlington's, for he was justly 

 surnamed the " architect Earl." Kent was merely the instrument 

 whose function it was to translate his patron's ideas into the correct 

 language of architecture, according to the recognized rules of 



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