Date of Birth: 1664
Date of Death: 1726
Nationality: English
Notes: Famous today as a soldier, playwright, and one of England's greatest architects, John Vanbrugh was born in London in 1664, the 4th of 19 children. His father, Giles Vanbrugh, was the son of Giles van Brugg, a Haarlem merchant who fled Flanders as a Protestant refugee. John's mother, Elizabeth, was the youngest daughter of Sir Dudley Carleton of Ember Court, Surrey. In his early years John worked in the wine trade for his cousin, William Matthews. Between 1683 and 1685 he served in the East India Company, trading at Surat on the west coast of India. In January of 1686 he was commissioned in the regiment of foot commanded by the Earl of Huntingdon. In September 1688 Vanbrugh was arrested in France as a spy and imprisoned in the Bastille. After his release he set himself upon the path of becoming a playwright. With astonishing speed, Vanbrugh became a huge success in London; his 1697 play "The Provok'd Wife" is probably the most popular and enduring of his plays. In 1704 he built his own theater - the Queen's Theatre (aka Italian Opera House) in Haymarket, London. Nobody knows when he turned his talents to architecture; what is certain is that in 1699 he famously created designs for Castle Howard for his friend, and fellow Kit-Cat Club member, the Earl of Carlisle. Vanbrugh displaced the famously difficult William Talman as Lord Carlisle's architect for Castle Howard (the Earl felt Talman had overcharged him). Talman wasn't just the Earl of Carlisle's architect - he was also the Comptroller of His Majesty's Works. In his role as First Lord of the Treasury Lord Carlisle wielded enormous power in the Office of the King's Works; it was thus not surprising that in June of 1702 Vanbrugh replaced Talman as Comptroller, and, over the next few years, also took over Talman's place as chief architect to the Whig aristocracy. The best summation of his career as an architect comes from Howard Colvin, writing in "A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600 - 1840": "It was a style that had no exact parallel in the history of European architecture, though it drew on French, English and Italian sources. Its character was baroque in the sense that it aimed at effects of movement,' but it achieved them by the grouping of masses and skilful handling of recession and projection rather than by the mere manipulation of the conventional apparatus of classical architecture. In achieving these effects Vanbrugh drew inspiration from the medieval and Elizabethan past as well as from the English baroque of Talman and Wren." Colvin goes on to say that the design of Vanbrugh's great houses shows a strong sense of the picturesque and that he must also be regarded as a pioneer of the Picturesque landscape movement. In 1704 Vanbrugh was appointed a herald and created Clarenceux King of Arms; on September 19, 1714 he was knighted by King George I. Though Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace are his most famous works, many architectural historians consider Seaton Delaval Hall to be Vanbrugh's masterpiece; Grimsthorpe Castle was his last important work. During Vanbrugh's last years British architecture came strongly under the influence of the Palladian style espoused by Lord Burlington. So complete was this new Palladian juggernaut that it completely eclipsed Vanbrugh's highly individual Baroque style, leaving him out of style and forgotten by the time of his death in 1726. The most famous portrait of Vanbrugh is the Kneller painting of him as a member of the Kit-Cat Club, executed when he was around 40 (in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London). The largest collection of Vanbrugh's drawings is in the Victoria & Albert Museum.