The architecture of George Dance the Younger
Little is known of the architectural thought of George Dance, and this makes it very hard to assess his architectural projects - a process that is only complicated by the fact that few of his buildings have remained. In one famous manifestation of his thought, however, Dance spoke out for the liberation of artistic genius from restraining rules: "Architecture unshackled would afford to the greatest genius the greatest opportunities of producing the most powerful efforts to the human mind."1 At the same time contemporaries praised him and his architectural endeavours specifically for their appropriateness and expression of purpose.
Samuel Cockerell, for instance, remarked in 1798 that "Dance excelled all the present architects in appropriate invention. His designs explained the purpose for which the building was intended."2 Indeed, appropriateness and situation, the importance of physical but also social context, were hallmarks of the architectural thought professed at the Royal Academy at the time. The stress on context and appropriateness contrast sharply with insistence on freedom that Dance proclaimed.
To understand this contrast, we have to understand what architecture unshackled meant to Dance. Guidelines and restrictions no doubt fit much easier than inventive freedom in a critical framework that is defined by measures of appropriateness. Apparently, however, Dance was compelled to express his concern for something that would restrain this inventive freedom of work, even when it was received as most appropriate by his colleagues and critics. Both the restriction and the reception beg questions on how they were understood by Dance and his contemporaries.
Two approaches
We can approach this problem from either side of the paradox: what, on the one hand, restrained Dance's freedom? The formation of the architectural profession proper, a process well underway in the mid-eighteenth century, as well as the Royal Academy - of which Dance was a founding member - play an important part in this question, because both processes have put an effort in recording the responsibilities and civil countenance of architecture and its practitioners. In this respect it is interesting to unravel Dance's thoughts on architecture, however dispersed they have been delivered.
The methodology of the architect opens another approach to the problem. Through his design process, the effect of unrestrained freedom on his designs can be traced. The reflection by contemporaries briefly hinted upon above already reveals that his works had been regarded as anything but improper, so his concern did not result in a proliferation of unexpected caprices. That begs the question how his seemingly self-proclaimed unrestrained genius manifested itself through the design process.
The main aim of this thesis has been to answer the two questions that arise from this contrast:
- What did unrestrained freedom mean to Dance?
- How did it manifest in his design work?