C. R. Cockerell RA (1788–1863) The Professor’s Dream is the title of a small exhibition (until 25 September) in the Tennant Room at the Royal Academy, a relatively new space that links with the John Madejski Fine Rooms, formerly the piano nobile of old Burlington House. Who was this professor, and what was his dream? For an architect of extraordinary ability, Cockerell seems destined to be overlooked, while some of his contemporaries, including Soane and Pugin, have entered the consciousness of the art-loving public. He was a designer and draughtsman of genius, the finest classical architect to work in the Victorian period. He was a bold and successful archaeologist, who made important discoveries in Greece as a young man, and a major theorist whose lectures as Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy were the pretext for the large watercolour now on show.
‘Architecture belongs to history,’ Cockerell declared to his Academy audience in 1843, standing in front of what he called his ‘drop scene’, showing 63 buildings from the past rising from the same ground plan. ‘The Professor’s Dream’, 1848, is an elaboration of the same idea, in which the oldest (and smallest) buildings are in front, and domes and spires rise in ever paler washes behind them. Close to, the freshness of the rendering is delightful, while from a few paces back, the whole scene shimmers like the dream of the title.
To complement this treasure from the Academy’s collection, the rest of the display illustrates related compositions by Cockerell, and work by students of the Royal Academy after 1870 when, seven years after his death but owing much to his inspiration, an architecture evening school was set up at the newly occupied Burlington House.
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