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Lot Essay
Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton (1803-1865), the Crystal Palace (as it was soon nicknamed), was chosen from over 245 submissions for the competition to design a building to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. As head of the Society of the Arts, Prince Albert conceived the idea of the exhibition to impress the world with Britain's industrial achievements. Countries taking part (including France, the United States, Russia and Egypt) displayed exhibits falling into four main categories - Raw Materials, Machinery, Manufacturers and Fine Arts. The huge glass and iron structure only took 9 months to complete, covered over 19 acres of Hyde Park, and was opened on 1 May 1851 by Queen Victoria, to great fanfare.
Once the Exhibition was over in October 1851, Paxton decided to create a 'Winter Park and Garden under Glass' at Penge Place Estate, Sydenham, which was owned by his friend, the railway entrepreneur Leo Schuster. Between August 1852 and June 1854 the whole building was relocated and enlarged - it was 1,848 feet long and 408 feet wide (nearly 50 percent larger in cubic content than at Hyde Park, with almost twice the surface of glass), with the addition of two huge water towers built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel - and the park surrounding the site landscaped. Brunel’s water towers (located at each end of the building) were completed in 1856, and subsequently the North Transept (on the right hand side of the building) was destroyed by fire in 1866, so the view presented was only true for ten years (1856-1866) - which helps date the painting. The picture also captures the brief prosperity of Paxton's large scale Waterworks, which cost more than the Palace and its contents. These were inaugurated for Queen Victoria on Waterloo Day 1856, boasting how they were outdoing the Grandes Eaux at Versailles, but (unlike the lesser fountains on the Upper Terraces) the whole system was seldom played, and was in ruins by the 1870s.
The full Waterworks, with their six million gallons in circulation and 11,788 jets, (including the major ones and minor mouths and spouts) were impossible to maintain - the colossal plume of water to be seen rising from the lower basin reached higher than Nelson’s Column. The Cascade with its thirty-foot waterfall and the tazza fountains to either side is clearly visible and at its top are the twin Water Bowers or Temples designed by Owen Jones, author of The Grammar of Ornament. He was responsible, along with Matthew Digby Wyatt, for the great Fine Arts Courts inside the Palace that presented huge highly coloured models of the great architectural styles, to teach colour and ornament - Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, the Alhambra, and Gothic.
The Upper Terraces with their steps and balustrades partially survive, as do the English landscape gardens, top right. Below the terraces to the left is the large metal structure of the Rosery on a mound, also designed by Jones. It is surprising that the artist has not shown at the foot of his painting Waterhouse Hawkins’ famous series of enormous models of the 'Extinct Animals’, although Paxton's planting (that suggested the primeval world), adjacent to the rustic bridge, is depicted.
Crystal Palace and its grounds became the world's first theme park offering education, entertainment, a rollercoaster, cricket matches and it even hosted 20 F.A. Cup Finals between 1895 and 1914. The site attracted 2 million visitors a year, and was also home to displays, festivals and many notable musical events in the colossal Concert Hall, as well as over 100,000 members of the Royal Navy during the First World War. However, despite the number of visitors, the Palace Company was soon in financial trouble. The Palace fell into financial ruin, and a series of fires - culminating in the devastating fire of 30 November 1936 - spelt the end of the historic building.
We are grateful to Dr Jan Piggott, Charles Hind, Melvyn Harrison, and David Lancaster for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Once the Exhibition was over in October 1851, Paxton decided to create a 'Winter Park and Garden under Glass' at Penge Place Estate, Sydenham, which was owned by his friend, the railway entrepreneur Leo Schuster. Between August 1852 and June 1854 the whole building was relocated and enlarged - it was 1,848 feet long and 408 feet wide (nearly 50 percent larger in cubic content than at Hyde Park, with almost twice the surface of glass), with the addition of two huge water towers built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel - and the park surrounding the site landscaped. Brunel’s water towers (located at each end of the building) were completed in 1856, and subsequently the North Transept (on the right hand side of the building) was destroyed by fire in 1866, so the view presented was only true for ten years (1856-1866) - which helps date the painting. The picture also captures the brief prosperity of Paxton's large scale Waterworks, which cost more than the Palace and its contents. These were inaugurated for Queen Victoria on Waterloo Day 1856, boasting how they were outdoing the Grandes Eaux at Versailles, but (unlike the lesser fountains on the Upper Terraces) the whole system was seldom played, and was in ruins by the 1870s.
The full Waterworks, with their six million gallons in circulation and 11,788 jets, (including the major ones and minor mouths and spouts) were impossible to maintain - the colossal plume of water to be seen rising from the lower basin reached higher than Nelson’s Column. The Cascade with its thirty-foot waterfall and the tazza fountains to either side is clearly visible and at its top are the twin Water Bowers or Temples designed by Owen Jones, author of The Grammar of Ornament. He was responsible, along with Matthew Digby Wyatt, for the great Fine Arts Courts inside the Palace that presented huge highly coloured models of the great architectural styles, to teach colour and ornament - Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, the Alhambra, and Gothic.
The Upper Terraces with their steps and balustrades partially survive, as do the English landscape gardens, top right. Below the terraces to the left is the large metal structure of the Rosery on a mound, also designed by Jones. It is surprising that the artist has not shown at the foot of his painting Waterhouse Hawkins’ famous series of enormous models of the 'Extinct Animals’, although Paxton's planting (that suggested the primeval world), adjacent to the rustic bridge, is depicted.
Crystal Palace and its grounds became the world's first theme park offering education, entertainment, a rollercoaster, cricket matches and it even hosted 20 F.A. Cup Finals between 1895 and 1914. The site attracted 2 million visitors a year, and was also home to displays, festivals and many notable musical events in the colossal Concert Hall, as well as over 100,000 members of the Royal Navy during the First World War. However, despite the number of visitors, the Palace Company was soon in financial trouble. The Palace fell into financial ruin, and a series of fires - culminating in the devastating fire of 30 November 1936 - spelt the end of the historic building.
We are grateful to Dr Jan Piggott, Charles Hind, Melvyn Harrison, and David Lancaster for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.