Why 'Greek' Thomson?
And when was he described as such?
For Thomson’s biographer, Ronald McFadzean, Thomson’s overt use of the Greek in architecture dates from around 1854, during his partnership with his brother-in-law John Baird II, and specifically to three commissions: for Knowe Cottage (now ‘The Knowe’) for hat and cap manufacturer John Blair, for whom Thomson then designed what McFadzean described as ‘the first of his entirely Greek-inspired buildings’, a warehouse at the corner of Howard and Dixon Streets in Glasgow; and Rockland at Helensburgh.
While the exterior of The Knowe is more Italian Romanesque than Greek, McFadzean’s description of the interior suggests more evident Greek influences:
… a staircase … constructed of timber steps with an ornate balustrade whose vertical members are formed of slender elongated Corinthian columns [a] treatment to be found almost exactly in Nicholson’s Architectural Dictionary…. [In what was originally the dining room] an Oregon pine fireplace around decorated with anthemion and honeysuckle motifs in relief…. [and upstairs bedrooms] treated in a restrained Greek manner.
McFadzean notes that the slightly later ground floor extension
‘is treated in a more full blooded Greek manner. The doorways to the study and the dining room are derived from the Erechtheion doorway, while the plaster ceilings exhibit a profusion of Greek motifs.
A larger Erechtheion doorway featured at Howard Street site (below, from the 1960s).
If Rockland was ‘the first villa in which Thomson clearly broke free from the Italian Romanesque and cottage orné styles which had dominated all of his earlier domestic work’, McFadzean suggest that Thomson ‘had not yet reached his mature Greek idiom: a portico decorated with Greek motifs usually found in Thomson’s later buildings, McFadzean suggests, was a later addition.
The 1854 Exhibition
In the public mind, however, it appears that it was the 1854 Scottish Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures that attached the word ‘Greek’ to Alexander Thomson. In advance of its opening, journalists visited the new exhibition hall in Bath Street, although much remained to be done even a few days ahead of its planned opening at the end of December. The journalists’s reports provide detailed information about what they experienced and are worth reporting in full (paragraphs added), if only because of how they chime with what Thomson was doing in creating his interiors elsewhere.
The Greek Drawing Room, designed by Mr. Thomson, has, in the shape of furniture, as yet only two bronzed Grecian candelabra. But this lack will be soon supplied by tradesmen who will work up designs furnished by Mr. Thomson.
The ceiling of the apartment gives finely the effect of polychromy, as applied by the ancients. The large centre panel is studied with stars on a blue ground, and the small deep-set panels or coffers which surround the centre portion are haroniously ornamented. The upper part of the wall is enriched with panels divided by dwarf columns, with ornaments, similar to antae-fixae, between them. The lower portion of the wall is also freely coloured, chiefly in positive colours, which certainly were not thought to be in bad taste in interiors in classic times, whatever may now be thought of them by modern purists.
The window is to be of stained glass, with the figure of architecture in the centre light, supported by painting and sculpture. The mantle-piece is of the same design as another in the large hall, also contributed by Mr. Thomson, and much admired by visitors. Over the chimneypiece there is to be a design in marble filled with mirrors. Mirrors also are to be fitted into the panels of the door, and the effect, we doubt not, will be very fine1.
‘Orlando’, in the Glasgow Constitutional, writing a few days later, was more expansive (and determined to show off his learning):
A true poem can be built of brick as well as constructed of spondees and dactyls. Among the great epics of Grecian architecture are the Royal Institution and the High School of Edinburgh; and had the literature of Greece been embellished by the sonnet, its corresponsive would be found in the Greek Court by Mr Thomson. Like the sonnet, it is complete within itself, and wholly free from episode—not only “a gem of purest ray serene”2, but that “entire and perfect chrysolite”3 which admits of neither diminution nor extension. It is a composition of which the grand design is oneness and simplicity, with purity and the most exquisite grace and delicacy for the detail.
Although “chaste as ice and pure as snow,” yet, like poor Ophelia, it cannot “escape calumny:4” and I mnst take exception at once to the mirrors in the doors, which (in my opinion) are utterly subversive of that severity, simplicity, and unity, which I have ever been taught to esteem as among the great Greek distinctives.
The furnishing of this court will require the very, nicest judgment - the plenishing with such common-places as chairs and tables and couches and what-nots, and still preserving that dignified and solemn solitude, which meanwhile commands a feeling almost akin to reverence. And such is the object, and ought ever to be the consequence of high art, a term that applies to no school or studio more truly than to the Grecian.
Indeed it is this I fear which will very much stand in the way of the Greek Court becoming “popular.” It approaches so nearly to the ideal, that the great bulk of the community will never be able to find themselves “at home” in it. Grecian “feeling” requires a peculiar temperament and a high art-education thoroughly to appreciate it, and how very rarely is it that we have anything in this kind presented to our appreciation.
That which in our own generation has done more than anything else to popularise Grecian genius is the acting of Miss Faucit. There is no school of either art or morals that is better attended than the theatre, or exercises more influence by weight as well as number. I speak not of her representations of Antigone and Iphigenia, for these have never been presented to a Glasgow spectatory; but, as Grecian “feeling” appears to be wholly inseparable from the very highest art, it is no less equally evolved in not only her Juliet and Portia, but even her Beatrice and Rosalind.
All these particulars of Grecian genius to which I have been referring - the most perfect unity, majesty, severity, simplicity, and the most exquisite delicacy and grace - happily conspire in the admirable expressions of this consummate artist. Dr Johnson says, in his preface to his dictionary, that “to explain, requires the use of terms less abstruse than that which is to be explained:” and. believing that the stage is more familiar to many of my readers than is the Art-Exhibition, I have employed Miss Faucit’s acting as a most happy illustration of that peculiar genius which is the character of Grecian architecture.
I ought not to omit saying that in the Greek Court Mr Thomson has illustrated Greek colouring as well as form; but in this I would reconsider a good deal ere I would award to the most refined nation of antiquity a similar meed of praise to that I have already been bestowing. An example of a coloured statue would have been “an object of interest” to alike the profession and the dilletanti5.
Five years before his death, Thomson was being called ‘Greek’, but it was clear to one architect at least that he drew on Greek and other influences. In ‘Glasgow as seen by a London Architect’ (paragraphs added), the author singles out Thomson for consideration, while others - the Adam brothers, Charles Wilson - receive only passing mention.
One credit Glasgow has, in possessing an original architectural style, the production of one man, Mr Alexander Thompson, whom I heard designated Greek Thomson to distinguish him from the numerous architects of the same name in the city. Whether one like it or not, it cannot be denied the merit of originality, and what is more, of truth, though whether it be truth suited for us admits of question.
It is Greek treated with more Gothic freedom and mingled with Egyptian, Ninevite and Persian characteristics. Except in one church I saw, where a portico, which ought of course to be a church porch, is placed far above the ground-level, the lower part of the church being treated as a base for it, the style seems to be carried out with perfect truth6.
The style is applied to shops, warehouses, street houses, and country villas, one of which appeared in a late number of the Architect (though that instance scarcely shows its peculiarities) and adapted itself to all with perfect freedom. Ample light, and at the same time solidity, are obtained by using the whole into spaces between a range of square columns as windows. A few plain square stone piers judiciously placed among the plate glass of the shop windows, with a deep stone architrave above, form a base not inadequate in appearance, as is usually the case, for supporting the superstructure. Plain wall space is treated as if the architect knew its value. The details have great delicacy of line, though occasionally hard and a little tiresome from their sameness7.
This 1870 reference to ‘Greek’ Thomson is the earliest found to date; the next is in a response to a lecture by Honeyman on church architecture in Scotland from 18728 (where Thomson is also referred to as ‘the last of the Greeks’), and then in his various obituaries and subsequent reports.
Scottish Guardian, 23 Jan 1855
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
William Shakespeare, Othello, Act 5, Scene 2
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
Glasgow Constitutional, 27 January 1855
Presumably referring to St Vincent Street Church.
North British Daily Mail, 31 Oct 1870, reproducing The Architect, n.d.
Building News, 14 Jun 1872