Future historians who may write the architectural history of the 19th century will probably describe as its leading characteristic that enthusiastic revival of the Gothic style which took place in the second quarter of the century and continued with unabated vigour for more than thirty years. Among the many able architects who during this period contributed to cover England with churches and other buildings, designed in a style which for three centuries had been rejected as barbarous, the name of Pugin deserves to be the most conspicuous. No man so thoroughly mastered the true principles of the Gothic style in its various stages, both in its leading lines and in the minutest details of its mouldings and carved enrichments, and that too at a time when illustrated works on Gothic architecture, such as have since been produced in enormous quantities, had scarcely begun to exist; thus young Pugin had to learn the alphabet of his chosen style by careful and laborious study of the glorious examples of Gothic, both ecclesiastical and domestic, in ¼mich England was then (far more than now) so extraordinarily rich. His father was for many years engaged in preparing a large series of works on the Gothic buildings of England, almost, if not quite, the first which were illustrated with accurate drawings of mediaeval buildings; the early youth of A. W. Pugin was mostly occupied in making minute measured drawings for his father’s books, and in this way his enthusiasm for Gothic art was first aroused. All through his life, both in England and during many visits to Germany and France, he continued to make, for his own instruction and pleasure, great numbers of drawings and sketches, especially in pen and ink, and with sepia monochrome. These are perhaps the most beautiful architectural sketches that have ever been produced, perfect in their delicacy and precision of touch, and masterpieces of skilful treatment of light and shade. They are mostly minute in scale, some almost microscopic in detail. Many of the Continental street scenes and interiors of cathedrals are of especial beauty from their contrasts of brilliant light and transparent shadow, treated with Rembrandt-like vigour. At a very early age his wonderful mastery of Gothic detail was shown by the valuable aid he rendered to Sir Charles Barry in the construction of the new Houses of Parliament in 1836 and 1837. For some time he worked as a paid clerk to Barry, and to Pugin is mainly due the very remarkable excellence of all the details in this great building, executed, it must be remembered, at a time when hitherto all examples of the revived Gothic were of the most ignorant and tasteless description. Pugin not only designed and even modelled a great part of the sculpture and other decorations of the building, but had actually to train a school of masons and carvers to carry out his designs with spirit and accuracy.

While still young Pugin became a Roman Catholic, and this, if possible, increased his intense zeal and enthusiasm for Gothic, or, as he preferred to call it, Christian architecture. His profession became to him a sort of religion, and his study of mediaeval buildings was closely associated with his love for the mystic symbolism and the highly aesthetic outward form of the old faith. The result of this was that he was almost wholly employed by adherents of the Catholic religion. In one way this was a fortunate circumstance, for it saved him from the temptation of assisting in that great wave of falsification and vulgarization which, under the name of “restoration,” has devastated the principal mediaeval buildings of Great Britain and Ireland. In another way it was unfortunate, for his Catholic employers were mostly much pinched for money, and at the same time so devoid of all sympathy for the principles of which he was the chief exponent, that they almost always insisted on the greatest possible amount of display being made in the cheapest possible manner. On account of this it is unfair to judge of Pugin’s genius from a critical examination of his executed works. In almost every case his design was seriously injured, both by cutting down its carefully considered proportions and by introducing shams (above all things hateful to Pugin), such as plaster groining and even cast-iron carving. The cathedral of St George at Southwark, and even the church of the Jesuits in Farm Street, Berkeley Square, London, are melancholy instances of this. Thus his life was one series of disappointments; no pecuniary success compensated him for the destruction of his best designs, as in him the man of business was thoroughly subordinate to the artist. He himself used to say that the only church he had ever executed with unalloyed satisfaction was the one at Ramsgate, which he not only designed but paid for. Pugin was very broad in his love for the mediaeval styles, but on the whole preferred what is really the most suited to modern requirements, namely, the Perpendicular of the 15th century, and this he employed in its simpler domestic form with much success both in his own house at Ramsgate and in the stately Adare Hall in Ireland, built for Lord Dunraven. The cathedral of Killarney and the chapel of the Benedictine monastery of Douai were perhaps the ecclesiastic buildings which were carried out with least deviation from Pugin’s original conception.

He was a skilful etcher and produced a number of works illustrated in this way by his own hand, and written with much elo quence, antiquarian knowledge, and even brilliant humour. This last gift is exemplified in a series of etched plates in his Contrasts: on one side is some noble structure of the Middle Ages, and on the other an example of the same building as erected in the 19th century. His works on Chancel Screens and on The True Principles of Christian Architecture are very ably written and exquisitely illustrated.

Pugin’s melancholy and premature end was to a great extent caused by the embittering influence of the constant frustration of his noblest artistic struggles and conceptions.

See Ben. Ferrey, Recollections of A. Welby Pugin and his Father, London, 1861.