Painter, landscape gardener, and architect, born in Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire, NE England, UK. He studied in Rome, and became the principal exponent of the Palladian style of architecture in England. His buildings include the Horse Guards block in Whitehall, the Royal Mews in Trafalgar Square and the Treasury Buildings. An example of his gardens is at Stowe House in Buckinghamshire, and his artistry is visible in the Gothic screens at Westminster Hall and Gloucester Cathedral, and the interiors of Burlington House and Chiswick House in London.
Education
Kent's career began as a sign and coach painter who was encouraged to study art, design and architecture by his employer. A group of Yorkshire gentlemen sent Kent for a period of study in Rome, where he met Thomas Coke, later 1st Earl of Leicester, with whom he toured Northern Italy in the summer of 1714 (a tour that led Kent to an appreciation of the architectural style of Andrea Palladio's palaces in Vicenza), and Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, who took him back to England in 1719.
Architectural works
He is better remembered as the central architect of the revived Palladian style in England. Burlington gave him the task of editing The Designs of Inigo Jones... with some additional designs in the Palladian/Jonesian taste by Burlington and Kent, which appeared in 1727. As he rose through the royal architectural establishment, the Board of Works, Kent applied this style to several public buildings in London, for which Burlington's patronage secured him the commissions: the Royal Mews at Charing Cross (1731-33, demolished in 1830), the Treasury buildings in Whitehall (1733-37), the Horse Guards building in Whitehall, (designed shortly before his death and built 1750-1759).
In country house building, major commissions for Kent were designing the interiors of Houghton Hall (c.1725-35), recently built by Colen Campbell for Sir Robert Walpole, but at Holkham Hall the most complete embodiment of Palladian ideals is still to be found; there Kent collaborated with Thomas Coke, the other "architect earl", and had for an assistant Matthew Brettingham, whose own architecture would carry Palladian ideals into the next generation. Kent's domed pavilions were erected at Badminton House and at Euston Hall.
Kent could provide sympathetic Gothic designs, free of serious antiquarian tendencies, when the context called;
Landscape architect
As a landscape designer, Kent was one of the originators of the English landscape garden, a style of 'natural' gardening that revolutionised English garden design.
Kent's only real downfall was said to be his lack of horticultural knowledge and technical skill (which people like Charles Bridgeman possessed - his impact on Kent is often underestimated), but his naturalistic style of design compensated. The Stowe and Rousham houses are Kent's most famous works. At the latter, Kent elaborated on Bridgeman's 1720s design for the property, adding walls and arches to catch the viewer's eye. At Stowe, Kent used his Italian experience to give the manor a Romanist design, particularly with the Palladian Bridge.
Furniture designer
His stately furniture designs complemented his interiors: he designed furnishings for Hampton Court Palace (1732), for Devonshire House in London, and at Rousham.
In his own age, Kent's fame and popularity were so great that he was employed to give designs for all things, even for ladies' birthday dresses, of which he could know nothing and which he decorated with the five classical orders of architecture.
Walpole tribute
According to Horace Walpole, Kent "was a painter, an architect, and the father of modern gardening.
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