I was fortunate to acquire this architectural perspective by Alfred Waterhouse a couple of weeks ago at auction. The catalogue description read:

A. WATERHOUSE. Figures outside a Church, signed and dated 1870, watercolour, unframed, 14 1/4 x 20 in; two watercolours by J.L. Stewart; and a small group of pencil and watercolour studies (qty)

It was fairly obvious to me that it was an architectural perspective by Alfred Waterhouse, the pre-eminent figure of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture. It was also relatively easy to identify the subject which is St. Matthew’s Church, Blackmoor. Surprisingly I won it with an absentee bid at three times less than the total amount I’d left, so needless to say I was delighted. After I’ve sold the other items that came with it, it’ll probably end up costing me no more than the price of a Mars bar. I think what surprised me most was that I had no competition – in fact, I considered the total bid I’d left to be nominal at best. Now, I’ve always considered Waterhouse to be almost a household name – I mean, he’s responsible for many of the most popular and recognised buildings in the United Kingdom: The Natural History Museum, Manchester Town Hall a number of Oxbridge colleges, the Metropole Hotel in Brighton and countless other examples – he was even the answer to a question on the BBC2 series University Challenge very recently. It is also incredibly rare for a Waterhouse architectural perspective to appear on the art market – since the 1970s only about four or five have ever gone under the hammer, as almost the entire body of his working designs (some nine thousand drawings) were bequeathed to the Royal Institute for British Architecture.

Pleasingly there is a good deal of recorded history and anecdote regarding both the church and the execution of the perspective watercolour. The church was built from the funds of Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne who gives an account of how he came to employ Waterhouse as Architect in Memorials Part 2 Personal and Political:

One of my earliest resolutions, after taking possession of our new home, was to build a church in that lower part of Selborne in which Blackmoor was situated, and to have the district made into a new parish. In the prosecution of that object I was aided by Frederic Parsons, then Vicar of Selborne, who in the early days of my connection with Magdalen College, had been tutor there, and was a good scholar, and a man of many accomplishments. He had, indeed, the best reason to know that such a subdivision of his parish was wanted. There was in that part of it which would naturally form the new district, a population of about 700, scattered in small clusters of houses, with only one considerable hamlet. That work was taken in hand soon after my residence at Blackmoor began. Mr. Alfred Waterhouse was my architect. I had been brought into communication with him over the plans for the new Courts of Law, and both liked him personally, and thought highly of his professional work. The church, which now stands at a distance of ten minutes’ walk north of our house, was built from his plans, and under his superintendence, by local masons and my own carpenters. This, and the building of a vicarage and schools and some more cottages, took the best part of three years. All the lower part of Selborne, in extent the larger part, was made, for ecclesiastical purposes, the new parish of St. Matthew, Blackmoor ; and the Church was consecrated on the 18th of May 1869. Bishop Claughton preached the sermon; and many of our most attached friends were present. On the day before we gave a dinner to the workmen and to a large body of the tenant farmers and labourers. In addressing them, I said, speaking-then, if ever, from my heart “Most men, at some time of their lives, desire to do some work which shall last after them, and which shall help those among whom they live when they themselves shall have passed away. And from the bottom of my soul I hope and pray that this undertaking, to be inaugurated (we trust) to-morrow, may prove to my children and my children’s children, and to generation after generation of their neighbours, the inhabitants of this place, a real and ever-increasing blessing.” It was a happy day.

The eagle-eyed amongst you might have spotted an inconsistency with the date of the watercolour and the date of the church consecration – it might seem odd having an architectural perspective drawing executed after the consecration of the building but it is worth noting that the consecration of a church isn’t necessarily the same as the completion – the Sagrada Familia has been consecrated but is a decade or so off completion. Moreover, the late biographer of Waterhouse, Colin Cunningham furnishes us with the precise details:

..at St Matthew’s Blackmoor, where Waterhouse charged 2.5 days of his own time on the perspective, it was not done until 1870 when the church was well under way. There are therefore good grounds for accepting that many of the fine perspectives were drawn more as aids to the appreciation of how an agreed design would appear than as part of the sales pitch. The great perspectives may have been attractive to clients, but as works of art. A number were hung in the boardrooms and committee rooms of the buildings themselves.

So how did the watercolour drawing end up in private hands? Well, Waterhouse submitted one of the perspectives to The Royal Academy exhibition of 1870 – exhibited as number 792 ‘St. Matthew’s, Blackmoor’ and attracted the following critique from The Athenaeum:

‘Mr. A. Waterhouse’s St. Matthew’s, Blackmoor has much of the architect’s grace and spirit, yet it is slightly mannered.’

It seems logical that the perspective was purchased from the exhibition at the Royal Academy and after a series of events eventually ended up in my possession. Regrettably the previous owner(s) have not cared for it very well, as it has suffered the from the effects of being hung close to a source of natural light, causing some fading of the colour pigments and discolouring of the paper, though some of this can be righted by a skilled conservator.

If anyone is interested in acquiring this watercolour drawing, I may be persuaded to sell, so in the words of Terry Tibbs, ‘talk to me’.