In this sumptuous and gorgeous chamber, with its marble-pillared doorways, its painted and gilded walls, its niches, brackets, slabs, and pediments of white marble, its gilt antique statues, its gaudy domed ceiling of blue and gold, we have the very acme and essence of the style and art of William Kent, triumphant and rampant. After our remarks on his work in the foregoing room, we shall not be expected to lose ourselves in admiration over this masterpiece of his pseudo-classic design and decoration. Yet little as we may agree with his theories of art, little as we may admire the way he carried them into practice, it is not to be denied that, viewed as a whole, there is considerable grandeur and stateliness, and a certain degree of fine proportion, about this highly-emblazoned saloon.
Though called the “Cube” Room, its dimensions are not exactly of that mathematical figure, the walls being only 26 feet 2 inches high, to the top of the cornice, and 34 feet 7 inches to the centre of the ceiling, though each side is 37 feet long.
The Painted Ceiling of the Cube Room.
THE ceiling seems to have been the first portion of the work undertaken by Kent, and to have been finished by him by the spring of the year 1722. That he was employed to do this work occasioned much very justifiable heart-burning. Sir James Thornhill was at that time serjeant-painter to the King, and in virtue of his office was entitled to receive the commission for painting this ceiling. Indeed, it appears from a “Memorial of Sir Thomas Hewett, Knt., Surveyor-General of His Majesties Works,” addressed to the Lords of the Treasury, dated 14th February, 1722-3, and “relating to the painting of the large Square Room at Kensington,” that in the foregoing autumn the King had commanded Hewett’s attendance at Kensington “about finishing the Three Large Rooms in the New Building,” and that Hewett then showed the King “several sketches of mosaic work, etc., for painting the ceiling of the Great Square Room.” The Memorial proceeds to state:
“His Majesty chose one of them; and after I ordered a model to be made, and Sir James Thornhill painted it, which His Majesty saw and approved of; and commanded me to tell the Vice-Chamberlain he should treat with Sir James Thornhill for the Price, and that it should be done out of Hand, which is all I know of the matter.”
Nevertheless, for some reason or other—probably owing to some backstair intrigue—Kent was employed to do the work instead. But before he had half finished it the officers of works were directed by the Treasury “to view and take care that the particulars of Mr. Kent’s proposal for painting the ceiling of the Great Chamber at Kensington be well answer’d, and the work in the best manner performed with l’Ultra-Marine.” They accordingly commissioned several of the best artists of the day “to view and carefully to consider the same and report in writing.”
The artists, or rather critics as they became—and trust an artist to be no too lenient a critic of a fellow artist’s work—were John van Vaart, Alexr Nisbett, and Jacob Rambour. Their report is dated May 22nd, 1722, and in it they state as follows: