Date of Birth: 1684-85
Date of Death: 1748
Nationality: English
Notes: Born as William Cant in Bridlington, Yorkshire, in the late 17th century, the future William Kent, who would be known in later life as "Il Signore," began as an apprentice coach painter in Hull, where his talent was soon noticed by a local squire, who, together with a number of the local Yorkshire gentry, raised the money to send Kent to Italy to study painting and architecture (he accompanied the collector John Tellman). Kent was "discovered" in Italy by Lord Burlington and became his protégé as an apostle of Palladian design. Burlington had big plans for Kent: he wanted to make him England's greatest history painter. Though this did not come to pass (his painting today is considered mediocre), Kent did become a very successful arbiter of taste. He was an architect and furniture designer, a painter, and an incredibly important landscape architect (he was one of the originators of natural landscape design and is considered by many historians to be the father of modern garden design). He was ahead of Capability Brown, Robert Adam, and Horace Walpole in setting new styles and began the trend toward controlling every aspect of architectural design. Among his followers were Matthew Brettingham the Elder, Henry Flitcroft, Isaac Ware, Stephen Wright, John Vardy, and Thomas Ripley. Though famous as an evangelist of Palladian design, his training in Italy, specifically the influence of the Italian Baroque, never left Kent's work (he was trained as a Baroque painter). The design of his famous console tables can be traced directly to Roman Baroque examples, and even some of interiors are Baroque, most notably his magnificently over-the-top staircase at 44 Berkeley Square in London. Little known is that Kent also designed for the theater, a result, very likely, of his admiration of the work of Inigo Jones.