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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner


(born Jan. 30, 1902, Leipzig, Ger. — died Aug. 18, 1983, London, Eng.) German-born British art historian. He studied at various German universities and taught at Göttingen University (1929 – 33) before moving to England to escape Nazism. There he taught at the Universities of London, Oxford, and Cambridge. He is best known for his writings on architecture, especially his 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, The Buildings of England (1951 – 74), one of the great achievements of 20th-century art scholarship. He conceived and edited the Pelican History of Art series (1953 – ); many of these individual volumes have become classics.

For more information on Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, visit Britannica.com.

 
 
British History: Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner

Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon (1902-83). A German-born art historian, Pevsner came to Britain in 1934 as a refugee from Nazism. He wrote widely on art and architecture, was a founder member of the William Morris and Victorian societies, and Slade professor of fine art at Oxford and Cambridge, as well as professor of the history of art at Birkbeck College, London. Of his many publications, including the Pelican History of Art (begun 1953), the best known is The Buildings of England, which he began in 1949 and worked on for 21 years.

 
Modern Design Dictionary: Nikolaus Pevsner

(1902-83)

Born in Leipzig, Germany, architectural and design historian Nikolaus Pevsner studied at the Universities of Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, and Frankfurt, gaining his doctorate on Leipzig baroque houses in 1924. In 1926 he joined the Dresden Art Gallery until 1928, when he took up a post at Göttingen University. He developed an interest in English art and architecture, visiting Britain for the first time in 1930. In the face of political upheaval in Germany Pevsner moved to England in 1933, coming into contact with Philip Sargent Florence of Birmingham University, who suggested that he should investigate contemporary English industrial design. This resulted in his book An Enquiry into Industrial Art in England (1937). (At this time he was also a buyer of textiles and glass for Gordon Russell Ltd.). However, the book with which he has been most associated in terms of design was his 1936 volume on Pioneers of the Modern Movement: From William Morris to Walter Gropius. Subsequently it has undergone many reprints, and several editions, and has been translated into many languages. For many decades it has provided a focal point for debates about the nature and practice of design history which, by the later 1970s, moved away from the Pevsnerian emphasis on Modernism and its origins in the 19th-century design reform movement. His account was largely predicated on the artistic creativity of well-known individuals and a shift away from historicism and ‘gratuitous’ ornamentation towards an emphatically 20th-century ‘Machine Age’ outlook. Such an outlook was challenged increasingly by others who placed greater emphasis on the wider social, economic, political, and technological climate in which design is manufactured and used. After a brief period of internment in 1940 the Architectural Press employed Pevsner before, from 1942 to 1945, he became editor of the Architectural Review, a periodical which since the late 1920s had been sympathetic to the Modernist cause. From 1942 until his retirement in 1969 he was employed by Birkbeck College, University of London, and was appointed as professor in the History of Art in 1959. Other writings reflecting an interest in design matters included Visual Pleasures in Everyday Things (1946), High Victorian Design (1951), and Sources of Modern Art (1964, republished as Sources of Modern Architecture and Design in 1968). Pevsner is perhaps best known today as an architectural historian, his many publications in this genre including An Outline of European Architecture (1942), The Buildings of England series (1951 onwards), Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century (1972), and A History of Building Types (1976). He held several prestigious posts including the Slade Professorships in Fine Art at Cambridge (1949-55) and Oxford (1968-9) and was also an influential figure on many important committees including the Fine Art Commission, the Historic Buildings Council, and the National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design. He was a founding member of the Victorian Society, taking on the role of chair from 1958 to 1976. Amongst the many awards he received were the CBE (1953) and the Royal Institute of British Architects Royal Gold Medal for architecture. He was knighted in 1969 for ‘services to art and architecture’.

 
Architecture and Landscaping: Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner

(1902–83)

German-born British art-historian. He was a strong supporter of the Modern Movement, which gave some of his early writings an undoubted bias, notably the very influential Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius (1936, later reissued as Pioneers of Modern Design) and the enormously successful (and again influential) An Outline of European Architecture (1942 with many subsequent editions). He had a powerful impact on the Architectural Review) in the 1940s, when it became a pro-Modern-Movement force, and changed the architectural climate of Britain. He originated and edited the Pelican History of Art (from 1953), one of the most impressive series on art and architecture published in C20. His greatest achievement was arguably the county-by-county guides of The Buildings of England (from 1951), much of which he wrote himself, although some of his highly subjective comments have been toned down in later editions. His distinguished collections of essays and papers published as Studies in Art, Architecture, and Design (1968) and A History of Building Types (1976) are mines of information. He was devoted to the study of the architecture (especially churches) of his adopted country, and made an incalculable contribution to scholarship. However, the notions he imbibed while a student at Leipzig (especially influenced by his teacher, Georg Maximilian Wilhelm Pinder (1878–1947—who was much respected by the National Socialists, not least for his over-estimation of German art in relation to other European countries) ), including his beliefs in the Zeitgeist (spirit of the age) and in ‘national character’, led him to presuppositions that perhaps distorted his sense of history. For example, he argued that among Gropius's architectural antecedents were members of the English Arts-and-Crafts Movement: this was typical of his attempts to create links with the past to promote his own heroes, for it is well-known that Arts-and-Crafts architects (e.g. Baillie Scott and Voysey) rejected Gropius and all he stood for. Gropius and his disciples did much to destroy traditional crafts-based building (despite Gropius's insistence (to Pevsner) that William Morris was one of his main sources of inspiration). Nevertheless, his many immense achievements deserve respect.

Bibliography

  • Bradley & B. Cherry (2001)
  • B. Cherry (1998)
  • Draper (ed.) (2004)
  • Games (ed.) (2002)
  • Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
  • Pevsner (1960, 1963, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1974, 1974a, 1976)
  • Jane Turner (1996)
  • D.Watkin (1977)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus
(pĕvz'nər) , 1902–83, English architectural historian, b. Germany. Influenced by Heinrich Wölfflin, Pevsner contended in his many works that art must be considered within its historical and social context. For many years Pevsner was art editor of Penguin Books. He was knighted in 1969. His major works include An Outline of European Architecture (1942), Pioneers of Modern Design (2d ed. 1949), Mannerism to Romanticism (2 vol., 1968), A History of Building Types (1976), and The Buildings of England, a massive 46-volume series of studies of regional English architecture (1951–74).
 
Wikipedia: Nikolaus Pevsner


Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner, CBE, (January 30, 1902 – August 18, 1983) was a German-born British historian of art and, especially, architecture. He is best known for his 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, The Buildings of England (1951-74), one of the great achievements of 20th-century art scholarship.

Life

The son of a Jewish merchant, Pevsner was born in Leipzig, Saxony. He studied art history at the Universities of Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, and Frankfurt/Main in Germany (PhD 1924), worked at the Dresden Gallery (1924–28) and taught at Göttingen University (1929–33). According to Games (2002), he was an admirer of some of the economic policies of the early Hitler regime, but was caught up in the ban on Jews being employed by the Nazi state shortly after Hitler's accession to power and was required to step down from Göttingen in May 1933. Later that year he moved to England where friends found him a research post at the University of Birmingham[1]. In the early 1940s he joined the academic staff at Birkbeck College, University of London, becoming a professor, and was later a visiting lecturer at both the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford. He assumed British citizenship in 1946.

As well as The Buildings of England, Pevsner conceived and edited the Pelican History of Art series (1953–), many individual volumes of which are regarded as classics.

In 1958, Pevsner was inivted to become founder chairman of The Victorian Society, the national charity for the study and protection and Victorian and Edwardian architecture and other arts. He was also an early an active member of the Georgian Group founded in 1937.

He died in London in 1983 and his memorial service was held at the Church of Christ the King, Bloomsbury the following December.

Papers

Research papers and correspondence relating to Pevsner's first job in a British university, after leaving Germany, can be found at the University of Birmingham Special Collections but are as yet uncatalogued.

Famous Ideas and Theories

  • "A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture. Nearly everything that encloses space on a scale sufficient for a human being to move in is a building; the term architecture applies only to buildings designed with a view to aesthetic appeal."

From An Outline of European Architecture, 1943. Pevsner also described the three ways aesthetic appeal could manifest itself in architecture: in a building's façade, the material volumes or the interior.

Selected bibliography

  • Academies of Art, Past and Present (1940)
  • An Outline of European Architecture (1943)
  • Pioneers of Modern Design (1949; originally published in 1936 under the title Pioneers of the Modern Movement)
  • The Buildings of England (1951-74)
  • The Englishness of English Art (1956)
  • The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design (1968)
  • A History of Building Types (1976)
  • Pevsner on Art and Architecture: the Radio Talks, edited and introduced by Stephen Games, (Methuen, 2003)

The Buildings of England

After moving to England, Pevsner found that the study of architectural history had little status in academic circles, and the amount of information available, especially to travellers wanting to inform themselves about the architecture of a particular district, was limited. He conceived a project to write a series of comprehensive county guides to rectify this, and gained the backing of Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, for whom he had written his Outline of European Architecture. Work on the series began in 1945. Lane employed two part-time assistants, both German refugee art historians, who prepared notes for Pevsner from published sources. Pevsner spent the academic holidays touring the country to make personal observations and carry out local research, before writing up the finished volumes. The first volume was published in 1951. Pevsner wrote 32 of the books himself and 10 with collaborators, with a further 4 of the original series written by others. Since his death, work has continued on the series, with several volumes now in their third revision.

The books are compact and intended to meet the needs of both specialists and the general reader. Each contains an extensive introduction to the architectural history and styles of the area, followed by a town-by-town - and in the case of larger settlements, street-by-street - account of individual buildings. The guides offer both detailed coverage of the most notable buildings and notes on lesser-known and vernacular buildings; all building types are covered but there is a particular emphasis on churches and public buildings. Each volume has a central section with several dozen pages of photographs, originally in black and white, though colour illustrations have featured in revised volumes since 2003.

The list below is of the volumes that were in print in 2006. The original volumes are gradually being replaced with new editions in a larger format, updated to reflect architectural-history scholarship since the first publications of the guides and to include significant new buildings. The dates after each title are of the first publication and of any revised edition. All are now published by the Yale University Press. The volumes for Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, the London City Churches, Manchester and Sheffield are part of the parallel "Pevsner City Guides" series, a more heavily illustrated paperback format.

  • Bath (2003) (Michael Forsyth) ISBN 0-300-10177-5
  • Bedfordshire, Huntingdon & Peterborough (1968) ISBN 0-300-09581-3
  • Berkshire (1966) ISBN 0-300-09582-1
  • Buckinghamshire (1960;1994) (rev. Elizabeth Williamson) ISBN 0-300-09584-8
  • Cambridgeshire (1954;1970) ISBN 0-300-09586-4
  • Cheshire (1971) ISBN 0-300-09588-0 (with Edward Hubbard)
  • Cornwall (1951;1970) (rev. Enid Radclffe) ISBN 0-300-09589-9
  • County Durham (1953;1983) (rev. Elizabeth Williamson) ISBN 0-300-09599-6
  • Cumberland & Westmorland (1967) ISBN 0-300-09590-2
  • Derbyshire (1953;1978) (rev. Elizabeth Williamson) ISBN 0-300-09591-0
  • Devon (1952;1989) ISBN 0-300-09596-1
  • Dorset (1972) ISBN 0-300-09598-8 (with John Newman)
  • Essex (1954;1965) (rev. Enid Radcliffe) ISBN 0-300-09601-1
  • Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds (1970;1999) (David Verey, rev. Alan Brooks) ISBN 0-300-09604-6
  • Gloucestershire: The Vale & Forest of Dean (1970;2002) (David Verey, rev. Alan Brooks) ISBN 0-300-09733-6
  • The Isle of Wight (2006) ISBN 0-300-10733-1 (with David Wharton Lloyd)
  • Hampshire & The Isle of Wight (1967) ISBN 0-300-09606-2 (with David Wharton Lloyd)
  • Herefordshire (1963) ISBN 0-300-09609-7
  • Hertfordshire (1953;1977) (rev. Bridget Cherry) ISBN 0-300-09611-9
  • Kent: North East & East (1969;1983) (John Newman) ISBN 0-300-09613-5
  • Kent: West & the Weald (1969;1976) (John Newman) ISBN 0-300-09614-3
  • Lancashire: Liverpool & the South-West (2006) ISBN 0-300-10910-5 (with Richard Pollard)
  • Lancashire: Manchester & the South-East (2004) ISBN 0-300-10583-5 (with Clare Hartwell and Matthew Hyde)
  • North Lancashire (1969) ISBN 0-300-09617-8
  • Leicestershire & Rutland (1960;1984) (rev. Elizabeth Williamson) ISBN 0-300-09618-6
  • Lincolnshire (1964;1989) (with John Harris, rev. Nicholas Antram) ISBN 0-300-09620-8
  • Liverpool (2003) (Joseph Sharples) ISBN 0-300-10258-5
  • London 1: The City of London (1997) ISBN 0-300-09624-0 (with Simon Bradley)
  • London 2: South (1983) ISBN 0-300-09651-8 (with Bridget Cherry)
  • London 3: North-West (1991) ISBN 0-300-09652-6 (with Bridget Cherry)
  • London 4: North (1998) ISBN 0-300-09653-4 (with Bridget Cherry)
  • London 5: East (2004) ISBN 0-300-10701-3 (with Bridget Cherry and Charles O'Brien)
  • London 6: Westminster (2003) ISBN 0-300-09595-3 (with Simon Bradley)
  • London City Churches (1998) (Simon Bradley) ISBN 0-300-09655-0
  • Manchester (2001) (Clare Hartwell) ISBN 0-300-09666-6
  • Norfolk 1: Norwich & North East (1962;1997) (rev. Bill Wilson) ISBN 0-300-09607-0
  • Norfolk 2: South & West (1962;1999) (rev. Bill Wilson) ISBN 0-300-09657-7
  • Northamptonshire (1961;1973) (rev. Bridget Cherry) ISBN 0-300-09632-1
  • Northumberland (1957;1992) ISBN 0-300-09638-0 (with Ian A. Richmond, rev. John Grundy, Grace McCombie, Peter Ryder and Humphrey Welfare)
  • Nottinghamshire (1951;1979) (rev. Elizabeth Williamson) ISBN 0-300-09636-4
  • Oxfordshire (1974) ISBN 0-300-09639-9 (with Jennifer Sherwood)
  • Sheffield (2004) (Ruth Harman and John Minnis) ISBN 0-300-10585-1
  • Shropshire (1958;2006) (rev. John Newman) ISBN 0-300-12083-4
  • Somerset: North & Bristol (1958) ISBN 0-300-09640-2
  • Somerset: South & West (1958) ISBN 0-300-09644-5
  • Staffordshire (1974) ISBN 0-14-071046-9
  • Suffolk (1961;1974) (rev. Enid Radcliffe) ISBN 0-300-09648-8
  • Surrey (1962;1971) (with Ian Nairn, rev. Bridget Cherry) ISBN 0-300-09675-5
  • Sussex (1965) ISBN 0-300-09677-1 (with Ian Nairn)
  • Warwickshire (1966) ISBN 0-300-09679-8 (with Alexandra Wedgwood)
  • Wiltshire (1963;1975) (rev. Bridget Cherry) ISBN 0-300-09659-3
  • Worcestershire (1968) ISBN 0-300-09660-7
  • Yorkshire: The North Riding (1966) ISBN 0-300-09665-8
  • Yorkshire: The West Riding (1959;1967) (rev. Enid Radcliffe) ISBN 0-300-09662-3
  • Yorkshire: York & East Riding (1972;1995) (rev. David Neave) ISBN 0-300-09593-7

The Buildings of Scotland

The series continued under Pevsner's name into Scotland. The format is largely similar, however only Lothian was published in the original small volume style. One noticeable difference in the Scottish series is a greater subdivision of the main gazetteer (e.g. in Argyll and Bute mainland Argyll has separate gazetteer from its islands, and Bute similarly is treated on its own). Unlike The Buildings of England, none of the Scottish volumes adopt a hierarchy of ecclesiastical buildings, instead grouping them together. As with the English revisions, several of the volumes are the work of many contributors. As of 2006, the series is four volumes from completion.

  • Aberdeen and North-East Scotland (in preparation)
  • Argyll and Bute (2000) ISBN 0-300-09670-4 (Frank Arneil Walker)
  • Ayrshire and Arran (in preparation)
  • Borders (2006) ISBN 0-300-10702-1 (Kitty Cruft, John Dunbar and Richard Fawcett)
  • Dumfries and Galloway (1996) ISBN 0-300-09671-2 (John Gifford)
  • Dundee and Angus (in preparation)
  • Edinburgh (1984) ISBN 014071068X (John Gifford, Colin McWilliam and David Walker)
  • Fife (1988) ISBN 0-300-09673-9 (John Gifford)
  • Glasgow (1990) ISBN 0-300-09674-7 (Elizabeth Williamson, Anne Riches and Malcolm Higgs)
  • Highland and Islands (1992) ISBN 0-300-09625-9 (John Gifford)
  • Lothian, except Edinburgh (1978) ISBN 0-300-09626-7 (Colin McWilliam)
  • Perth and Kinross (2007) ISBN 0-300-10922-9 (John Gifford)
  • Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire (in preparation)
  • Stirling and Central Scotland (2002) ISBN 0-300-09594-5 (John Gifford and Frank Arneil Walker)

The Buildings of Wales

The series has also been extended to Wales.

  • Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion (2006) ISBN 0-300-10179-1 (Thomas Lloyd)
  • Clwyd (1986) ISBN 0-300-09627-5 (Edward Hubbard)
  • Glamorgan (1995) ISBN 0-300-09629-1 (John Newman)
  • Gwent/Monmouthshire (2000) ISBN 0-300-09630-5 (John Newman)
  • Gwynedd (research in progress)
  • Pembrokeshire (2004) ISBN 0-300-10178-3 (Thomas Lloyd, Julian Orbach and Robert Scourfield)
  • Powys (1979) ISBN 0-300-09631-3 (Richard Haslam)

The Buildings of Ireland

The Irish series is not so far advanced as the others. However the following have been published:

  • Dublin (2005) ISBN 0-300-10923-7 (Christine Casey)
  • North-West Ulster: the Counties of Londonderry, Donegal, Fermanagh & Tyrone (1979) ISBN 0-300-09667-4 (Alistair Rowan)
  • North Leinster (1993) ISBN 0-300-09668-2 (Alistair Rowan and Christine Casey)

Superseded Volumes

The revision of the series has rendered some original volumes obsolete, usually as the area of coverage has expanded. To date the following volumes have been superseded:

  • London: the Cities of London and Westminster (1957)
  • London, except the Cities of London and Westminster (1952)
  • London Docklands (1998) (with Elizabeth Williamson)
  • Middlesex (1951)
  • South Lancashire (1969) ISBN 0-14-071036-1

In addition, two volumes, North Devon and South Devon were superseded by a single volume covering the entire county.

See also

  • Survey of London - an even more detailed but incomplete account of the architecture of London.

Notes

  1. ^ BUZZ (2005)

References

External links


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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Modern Design Dictionary. A Dictionary of Modern Design. Copyright © 2004, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Architecture and Landscaping. A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Copyright © 1999, 2006 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nikolaus Pevsner".  Read more

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