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 Phené 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 
162 
