Indian style. The architecture of India influenced the West in a lesser way than did the architecture of China (
see chinoiserie), and was most evident during the
Regency and
Victorian periods as a variation on the theme of
Picturesque eclectic orientalism. The vogue for the
Hindoo style was partly prompted by Thomas
Daniell, his nephew
William Daniell (1769–1837), and William
Hodges, who published views of India. Hodges's
Travels in India (1780–3) also came out in a French edition, while his
Dissertation on the Prototypes of Architecture, Hindoo, Moorish, and Gothic (1787), and
Select Views in India (1785–8) revealed the ‘Barbaric Splendour’ of Indian buildings to the West. Hodges proposed that
Egyptian, Hindoo,
Moorish, and
Gothic all derived from a common visual memory of stalactite and rock formations. His theory suggests the longing for the
Primitive and the Natural that was a feature of late-C18 Romantic sensibility. One of the first fruits of the linking of Indian and Gothic forms was
Dance the Younger's south façade of the Guildhall, City of London (1788–9). The Hindoo style appeared in Sezincote, Glos. (early 1800s, by S. P.
Cockerell), complete with onion-domes,
chattratopped pinnacles, and multifoil arches, while
Porden introduced the Hindoo style into the stables, riding-school, and coach house, the Pavilion, Brighton, Sussex (1804–8).
Nash's Royal Pavilion, Brighton (1815–21), promiscuously mixed
Chinoiserie and Hindoo styles. Daniell produced a
capriccio of Hindu and
Islamic architecture for
Hope's ‘Indian’ room at Duchess Street, London. After the Great Exhibition of 1851 the Indian style became influential, given the importance of the Subcontinent in the British Empire, and Owen
Jones in his
Grammar of Ornament (1856) praised the contribution of India. The style was used in numerous interiors, including smoking-rooms and Turkish baths, especially after Queen Victoria was declared Empress of India (1877). A good example is the Indian Hall, Elveden Hall, Suffolk (1890s), by William
Young and his son
Clyde Francis Young (1871–1948), added to the house designed by
John Norton (1823–1904), who had also incorporated certain Indian features in the work of 1863–70.
Earlier, the Indian style had appeared in the USA, notably at P. T. Barnum's house at Bridgeport, CT (1846–8), designed by Leopold
Eidlitz and based on Nash's work at Brighton. This clearly influenced Henry
Austin when designing the New Haven Railroad Station (1851). Samuel
Sloan's
The Model Architect (1852–3) included designs with Indian flavours (e.g. the ‘Oriental Villa’), clearly the model for his Longwood Villa (Nutt's Folly), Natchez, MS (1854–61), a polygonal house crowned with an onion-dome. The published design may have influenced the New York Crystal Palace (1853–4) by
Carstensen and Gildemeister, a
polychrome structure of iron and glass.
In the C20
Lutyens's Viceroy's House, New Delhi (1912–31), combined an essential
Classicism with many themes derived from Indian architecture.
Bibliography
Conner (1979);
Handlin (1985);
Lewis & and Darley (1986);
Stamp (1976)
