Benjamin Wyatt's Correspondence: Wyatt's Architectural Style

Description:The letter featured above reveals that George Granville Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (1786-1861), the second Duke of Sutherland, had written to Wyatt enquiring whether he had produced any ‘plans and drawings’ of designs for Stafford House. The letter above is Wyatt’s response to the Duke’s enquiry, in which he assures the Duke that he had ‘a great many plans and Drawings’ of interiors for Stafford House.

Wyatt refers to his designs for the State Rooms at Stafford House, and also ‘for all the principal Rooms’, including ‘the South West Drawing Room’ and ‘the great south Drawing Room, the Gallery’ and also the ‘State Dining Room’. Wyatt’s lavish interiors included details of ‘ceilings – coves –cornices & various decorations of the Walls of each Room’.

In the letter, Wyatt describes the influences on his designs for Stafford House, providing a fascinating insight into his pioneering architectural style ‘Louis Quatorze’ which was to become hugely influential in the design of fashionable London residences. He writes ‘the nature or style of finishing contemplated in these Drawings, is that of the best parts of the Palace of Versailles, and of the date of Louis the 14th...finished with white & gold’. Still anxious to secure his role as architect for Stafford House, Wyatt adds ‘I am certain that a more splendid suite of Rooms, than these would have been, never existed in France’. He assures the Duke that the designs were complete and only required ‘the usual superintendence of the architect to carry them into practical execution’.

Wyatt emphasises his architectural credentials in his letter to the Duke. He refers to himself as an expert in ‘French decoration’, adding ‘there has now been so large a quantity of this kind of French decoration done, under me’. Wyatt refers to the work he had undertaken for the Duke of Wellington which included architectural designs for Aspley House in London.

Contextual Information from: John Martin Johnson, ‘Wyatt, Benjamin Dean (bap. 1775, d. 1855)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30101]