Individual Architects, Designers, & Planners, Palladianism & Neo-Classicism Architecture, Architects - Biography

James Paine

Name: James Paine
Author: Peter Leach, John Harris, Alastair Laing
ISBN: 9780302006023

by Peter Leach, John Harris, Alastair Laing

Write a review

Overview

One of the most individual and inventive exponents of the English Palladian style, James Paine (1717-89) was a leading pioneer of the Palladian villa as a country-house form and an early designer of Rococo interior decoration. His lively elevational style, exemplified particularly in the Midlands and North of England where much of his work was done, developed from early experiments with facade-width giant pediments such as that at Serlby Hall to striking compositions of a triple-pedimented form, as at Stockeld Park and Bywell Hall. Paine's career epitomises the change in the role of the professional architect which took place during the mid-eighteenth century, from confinement largely to official circles and a narrow grouping of traditional patrons to the status of an independent figure in private practice. He emerges as a confident pioneer of a new professionalism, a figure prophetic of the standing and responsibilities of the architect in eras to come.