Background
The son of a Russian-Jewish fur haulier, Nikolaus Pevsner was born in Leipzig, Saxony.
(Highlights of this fully revised and updated guide are th...)
Highlights of this fully revised and updated guide are the magnificent medieval fortresses of Warwick and Kenilworth Castles, but this county is also home to some of the most significant developments of England’s postwar modern architecture, notably the rebuilt city center of Coventry destroyed in the Blitz. Leamington Spa has fine terraces of the Regency period but most famous of all is the market town of Stratford-upon-Avon where William Shakespeare was born and educated and the houses associated with his family are preserved. Also featured are the area’s greatest country houses, from Tudor Compton Wynyates and the moated Baddesley Clinton to Baroque Stoneleigh, Palladian Ragley, and Arbury Hall, one of the finest mansions of the Gothic Revival. Highlights of this fully revised and updated guide are the magnificent medieval fortresses of Warwick and Kenilworth Castles, but this county is also home to some of the most significant developments of England’s postwar modern architecture, notably the rebuilt city center of Coventry destroyed in the Blitz. Leamington Spa has fine terraces of the Regency period but most famous of all is the market town of Stratford-upon-Avon where William Shakespeare was born and educated and the houses associated with his family are preserved. Also featured are the area’s greatest country houses, from Tudor Compton Wynyates and the moated Baddesley Clinton to Baroque Stoneleigh, Palladian Ragley, and Arbury Hall, one of the finest mansions of the Gothic Revival.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300215606/?tag=2022091-20
1951
(The definitive biography, based on exclusive access to di...)
The definitive biography, based on exclusive access to diaries and personal papers, as well as the archive of Pevsner's landmark series, The Buildings of England Born Nikolai Pewsner into a Russian-Jewish family in Leipzig in 1902, Nikolaus Pevsner was a dedicated scholar who pursued a promising career as an academic in Dresden and Göttingen.When, in 1933 Jews were no longer permitted to teach in German universities, he lost his job and looked for employment in England. Here, over a long and amazingly industrious career, he made himself an authority on the exploration and enjoyment of English art and architecture, so much so that his magisterial county-by-county series of 46 books on The Buildings of England (first published 1951 – 74) is usually referred to simply as 'Pevsner'. As a critic, academic and champion of Modernism, Pevsner became a central figure in the architectural consensus that accompanied post-war reconstruction; as a 'general practitioner' of architectural history, he covered an astonishing range, from Gothic cathedrals and Georgian coffee houses to the Festival of Britain and Brutalist tower blocks. Susie Harries explores the truth about Nikolaus Pevsner's reported sympathies with elements of Nazi ideology, his internment in England as an enemy alien and his sometimes painful assimilation into his country of exile. His Heftchen—secret diaries he kept from the age of 14 for another 60 years—reveal hidden aspirations and anxieties, as do his numerous letters (he wrote to his wife, Lola, every day that they were apart). Harries is the first biographer to have read Pevsner's private papers and, through them, to have seen into the workings of his mind. Her definitive biography is not only rich in context and far-ranging, but is also brought to life by quotations from Pevsner himself. He was born a Jew but converted to Lutheranism; trained in the rigour of German scholarship, he became an Everyman in his copious commissions, publications, broadcasts and lectures on art, architecture, design, education, town planning, social housing, conservation, Mannerism, the Bauhaus, the Victorians, Zeitgeist, Englishness, and how a nation's character may, or must, be reflected in its art. His life—as an outsider yet an insider at the heart of English art history—illuminates both the predicament and the prowess of the continental émigrés who did so much to shape British culture after 1945. The definitive biography, based on exclusive access to diaries and personal papers, as well as the archive of Pevsner's landmark series, The Buildings of England Born Nikolai Pewsner into a Russian-Jewish family in Leipzig in 1902, Nikolaus Pevsner was a dedicated scholar who pursued a promising career as an academic in Dresden and Göttingen.When, in 1933 Jews were no longer permitted to teach in German universities, he lost his job and looked for employment in England. Here, over a long and amazingly industrious career, he made himself an authority on the exploration and enjoyment of English art and architecture, so much so that his magisterial county-by-county series of 46 books on The Buildings of England (first published 1951 – 74) is usually referred to simply as 'Pevsner'. As a critic, academic and champion of Modernism, Pevsner became a central figure in the architectural consensus that accompanied post-war reconstruction; as a 'general practitioner' of architectural history, he covered an astonishing range, from Gothic cathedrals and Georgian coffee houses to the Festival of Britain and Brutalist tower blocks. Susie Harries explores the truth about Nikolaus Pevsner's reported sympathies with elements of Nazi ideology, his internment in England as an enemy alien and his sometimes painful assimilation into his country of exile. His Heftchen—secret diaries he kept from the age of 14 for another 60 years—reveal hidden aspirations and anxieties, as do his numerous letters (he wrote to his wife, Lola, every day that they were apart). Harries is the first biographer to have read Pevsner's private papers and, through them, to have seen into the workings of his mind. Her definitive biography is not only rich in context and far-ranging, but is also brought to life by quotations from Pevsner himself. He was born a Jew but converted to Lutheranism; trained in the rigour of German scholarship, he became an Everyman in his copious commissions, publications, broadcasts and lectures on art, architecture, design, education, town planning, social housing, conservation, Mannerism, the Bauhaus, the Victorians, Zeitgeist, Englishness, and how a nation's character may, or must, be reflected in its art. His life—as an outsider yet an insider at the heart of English art history—illuminates both the predicament and the prowess of the continental émigrés who did so much to shape British culture after 1945. The definitive biography, based on exclusive access to diaries and personal papers, as well as the archive of Pevsner's landmark series, The Buildings of England
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0701168390/?tag=2022091-20
(Available again in paperback, this first survey of buildi...)
Available again in paperback, this first survey of building types ever written remains an essential guide to vital and often overlooked features of the architectural and social inheritance of the West. Here Nikolaus Pevsner shares his immense erudition and keenly discerning eye with readers curious about the ways in which architecture reflects the character of society. He describes twenty types of buildings ranging from the most monumental to the least, from the most ideal to the most utilitarian. More than seven hundred illustrations illuminate the text. Both Europe and America have been covered with examples chosen largely from the nineteenth century, the crucial period for diversification. Included are national monuments, libraries, theaters, hospitals, prisons, factories, hotels, and many other public buildings; churches and private dwellings have been excluded for practical reasons. The author is concerned not only with the evolution of each type in response to social and architectural change, but also with differing attitudes toward function, materials, and style.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691018294/?tag=2022091-20
(One of the most widely read boks on European architecture...)
One of the most widely read boks on European architecture, Nikolaus Pevsner’s landmark work was first published in 1942. Through several revisions and updates during Pevsner’s lifetime, it continued to be a seminal essay on the subject, and even after his death, it remains as stimulating as it was back in the mid-twentieth century. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983) was one of the twentieth century’s most learned and stimulating writers on art and architecture. He established his reputation with Pioneers of Modern Design, though he is probably best known for his celebrated series of guides, The Buildings of England, acknowledged as one of the great achievements of twentieth-century scholarship. He was also founding editor of The Pelican History of Art, the most comprehensive and scholarly history of art ever published in English. A revised and updated full-color edition of the classic study of the history of European architecture
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1423604938/?tag=2022091-20
(The premier monument is Durham Cathedral, greatest of Eng...)
The premier monument is Durham Cathedral, greatest of English Norman churches. Lovers of the Middle Ages will also seek out the county's exceptional Anglo-Saxon churches, while many of its great castles - Brancepeth, Raby, Auckland, Lambton - conceal palatial Georgian and Victorian interiors. The landscape varies dramatically, from the wilds of Teesdale and Weardale, in the west, to the pioneering industrial ports of Sunderland and Hartlepool on the coast, including fine gentry houses and stone-built market towns. South Tyneside and northern Cleveland, historically part of County Durham, are also covered. The premier monument is Durham Cathedral, greatest of English Norman churches. Lovers of the Middle Ages will also seek out the county's exceptional Anglo-Saxon churches, while many of its great castles - Brancepeth, Raby, Auckland, Lambton - conceal palatial Georgian and Victorian interiors. The landscape varies dramatically, from the wilds of Teesdale and Weardale, in the west, to the pioneering industrial ports of Sunderland and Hartlepool on the coast, including fine gentry houses and stone-built market towns. South Tyneside and northern Cleveland, historically part of County Durham, are also covered.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300095996/?tag=2022091-20
Art and architecture historian
The son of a Russian-Jewish fur haulier, Nikolaus Pevsner was born in Leipzig, Saxony.
He attended the Thomas School and went on to study art history at the Universities of Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, and Frankfurt/Main, completing a PhD in 1924 on the baroque merchant houses of Leipzig.
According to biographer Stephen Games, Pevsner welcomed many of the economic and cultural policies of the early Hitler regime. However, due to Nazi race laws he was forced to resign his lectureship in 1933. Later that year he moved to England. His first post was an 18-month research fellowship at the University of Birmingham, found for him by friends in Birmingham and partly funded by the Academic Assistance Council. A study of the role of the designer in the industrial process, the research produced a generally critical account of design standards in Britain which he published as An Enquiry into Industrial Art in England (Cambridge University Press, 1937). He was subsequently employed as a buyer of modern textiles, glass and ceramics for the Gordon Russell furniture showrooms in London.
By this time Pevsner had also completed Pioneers of the Modern Movement: from William Morris to Walter Gropius, his influential pre-history of what he saw as Walter Gropius's dominance of contemporary design. Pioneers ardently championed Gropius's first two buildings (both pre–First World War) on the grounds that they summed up all the essential goals of 20th-century architecture; in England, however, it was widely taken to be the history of England's contribution to international modernism, and a manifesto for Bauhaus (i.e. Weimar) modernism, which it was not.[citation needed] In spite of that, the book remains an important point of reference in the teaching of the history of modern design, and helped lay the foundation of Pevsner's career in England as an architectural historian. Since its first publication by Faber & Faber in 1936, it has gone through several editions and been translated into many languages. The English-language edition has also been renamed Pioneers of Modern Design.
In 1940, Pevsner was interned as an enemy alien in Huyton, Liverpool. He was released after three months on the intervention of, among others, Frank Pick, then Director-General of the Ministry of Information. He spent some time in the months after the Blitz clearing bomb debris, and wrote reviews and art criticism for the Ministry of Information's Die Zeitung, an anti-Nazi publication for Germans living in England. He also completed for Penguin Books the Pelican paperback An Outline of European Architecture, which he had begun to develop while in internment. Outline would eventually go into seven editions, be translated into 16 languages, and sell more than half a million copies.
In 1942, Pevsner finally secured two regular positions. From 1936 onwards he had been a frequent contributor to the Architectural Review and from 1943 to 1945 he stood in as its acting editor while the regular editor J. M. Richards was on active service. Under the AR's influence, Pevsner's approach to modern architecture became more complex and more moderate. Early signs of a lifelong interest in Victorian architecture, also influenced by the Architectural Review, appeared in a series written under the pseudonym of "Peter F. R. Donner": Pevsner's "Treasure Hunts" guided readers down selected London streets, pointing out architectural treasures of the 19th century. He was also closely involved with the Review's proprietor, Hubert de Cronin Hastings, in evolving the magazine's theories on Picturesque planning.
In 1942, Pevsner was also appointed a part-time lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London; he would eventually retire from the college in 1969 as its first professor of art history. He lectured at Cambridge for almost 30 years, having been Slade professor there for a record six years from 1949 to 1955, and would also hold the Slade professorship at Oxford in 1968.
Framing all this was his career as a writer and editor. After moving to England, Pevsner had found that the study of architectural history had little status in academic circles, and the amount of information available, especially to travellers wanting to inform themselves about the architecture of a particular district, was limited. Invited by Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, for whom he had written his Outline and also edited the King Penguin series, to suggest ideas for future publications, he proposed a series of comprehensive county guides to rectify this shortcoming.
In 1946, Pevsner made the first of several broadcasts on the BBC Third Programme, presenting nine talks in all up to 1950, examining painters and European art eras. By 1977 he had presented 78 talks for the BBC, including the Reith Lectures in 1955 – a series of six broadcasts, entitled The Englishness of English Art, for which he explored the qualities of art which he regarded as particularly English, and what they said about the English national character. His A. W. Mellon Lectures in Fine Art at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., were published in 1976 as A History of Building Types.
Pevsner was a founding member in 1957 of the Victorian Society, the national charity for the study and protection of Victorian and Edwardian architecture and other arts. In 1964 he was invited to become its chairman, and steered it through its formative years, fighting alongside John Betjeman, Hugh Casson and others to save houses, churches, railway stations and other monuments of the Victorian age. He served for ten years (1960–70) as a member of the National Advisory Council on Art Education (or Coldstream Committee), campaigning for art history to be a compulsory element in the curriculum of art schools. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1965 and awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1967.
Carola died in 1963. Sir Nikolaus died 20 years later at home in Wildwood Terrace, Hampstead, London, in August 1983.
His memorial service was held at the Church of Christ the King, Bloomsbury, the following December, with the memorial address being given by Alec Clifton-Taylor, a friend of 50 years. He is buried in the churchyard of St Peter, Clyffe Pypard, in Wiltshire. His younger son, Tom, was a film producer and director who went on to work on several James Bond films.
(The definitive biography, based on exclusive access to di...)
(Highlights of this fully revised and updated guide are th...)
1951(Available again in paperback, this first survey of buildi...)
(One of the most widely read boks on European architecture...)
(The premier monument is Durham Cathedral, greatest of Eng...)
(A survey of European architectural styles from the Gothic...)
Pevsner insisted that art must be considered in its context, and that the direction of creativity is deeply influenced by national and regional styles.
In 1923, he married Carola ("Lola") Kurlbaum, the daughter of distinguished Leipzig lawyer Alfred Kurlbaum, one year earlier than they had planned after she had become pregnant. He worked as an assistant keeper at the Dresden Gallery (1924–28).