George Vivian (artist)

He was the second son of John Vivian, a solicitor of the excise, and barrister, the second son of Matthew Vivian of Penelewey, near Truro.[1][3] He was educated at Eton College, and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1817.[4]

Vivian made early travels to Vienna and the Balkans in 1818, and Albania in 1819. During a journey of 1824 to the Near East he encountered Lord Byron.[5] In 1828, on the death of his father, he inherited Claverton Manor.[1] He joined the Travellers Club in 1828 or 1829.[6] He made further journeys, to Spain and Portugal, in 1831 and 1837.[5]

The Fine Arts Commission in 1846, by John Partridge

Vivian was a commissioner for the plans to rebuild the Houses of Parliament in 1835, and became a member of the Society of Dilettanti in 1837.[7][8] In the period before his marriage, he visited Germany, Scandinavia and Russia.[5] He studied monumental art in Munich.[9] He sat on the Fine Arts Commission from 1841 to 1863, the whole period of its existence.[10] The Commission arose from an initial proposal and Select Committee of Benjamin Hawes, to couple the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament with a national promotion of the fine arts. Vivian had shown that committee arabesques from the Palazzo del Te. In a group of 22 dominated by noblemen, patrons and politicians, Vivian represented connoisseurs and collectors, with Samuel Rogers and Thomas Wyse.[11][12]

Contracting malaria in the Campagna in 1846, Vivian never again enjoyed perfect health.[5] He died on 5 January 1873, at 11 Grosvenor Square, London.[13] His library was put up for sale, in 1875.[14]

Vivian published illustrated books, mostly based on his own drawings.

• Some Illustrations of the Architecture of Claverton and of the Duke's House, Bradford, etc. (1837).[13] The plates were lithographs by Vivian, mostly from architectural drawings by Charles James Richardson (but Richardson was only 14 years old when the Old Manor was destroyed and George Vivian is likely to have made the drawings).[5] Richardson's Observations on the architecture of England during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I of the same year is a related work having plates in common, dedicated to Vivian, and published by John Weale.[15][16]

Market place in Oliveira, Guimarães, plate from Scenery of Portugal and Spain

• Spanish Scenery (1838)[17] and Scenery of Portugal and Spain (1839), lithographs by Louis Haghe, William Day and others.[13][18]
• Views from the Gardens of Rome and Albano (1848), engravings by James Duffield Harding.[13]

Harding was a friend, and is considered to have influenced Vivian's style.[5]

Vivian wrote articles on architecture for the Quarterly Review.[19] John Britton commented favourably in 1840 on his anonymous pamphlet The Prospects of Art in the Future Parliament House from 1835, which presaged the Fine Arts Commission.[20][21]

John Vivian, father of George, purchased Claverton Manor in 1816;[1] he brought in Jeffry Wyatt around 1820 for a new design.[22]

John Vivian

John Vivian

John Vivian (1756–1828), from a Cornish background, matriculated at St Mary Hall, Oxford in 1779, at age 22, graduating M.A. in 1784. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1785, the same year becoming solicitor to the Excise at Bristol, and later being made a bencher of the Middle Temple.[23][24] (A correction to Bibliotheca Cornubiensis differentiates the Excise solicitor John Vivian from John Vivian of the Inner Temple; but that distinction is contradicted by the website of the American Museum and Gardens, located in Claverton Manor.[1][25])

He married Marianne Edwards in 1792, and had a son John Edwards Vivian (born 1795/6) who was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1815. She was the daughter and heiress of Samuel Edwards of Cotham Lodge, in Gloucestershire near Bristol, who died in 1815.[24][26][27][28]

The Alumni Oxonienses record for George Vivian gives, for 1817, his father's residence as "Colham, Gloucestershire". This presumably means "Cotham".[4] Marianne Vivian died in Portland Place, London in 1826, and John died there in 1828, aged 73.[29][30]

The two houses at Claverton

The new Manor of 1816 at Claverton, now a museum, in 2010

The new Manor commissioned by John Vivian was on a fresh site, some 400 metres (1,300 ft) away from the old house, which was demolished, and in a neo-classical style, built from Bath stone.[31] George Vivian, in contrast, undertook to preserve what he could of the old house, completed in 1625.[5][31]

The old Manor at Claverton, 1811 copy of drawing

The old Manor became a noted example of Jacobean architecture, documented in some of its details by Richardson's 1837 book on the period. The architect Alexander Roos came to know Vivian by the early 1840s.[32]

Vivian married in 1842 Elizabeth Anne Grey, eldest daughter of Ralph William Grey (died 1822) of Backworth House, and sister of Ralph William Grey (1819–1869) the Member of Parliament.[43][44][45][46] The Greys of Backworth, in the Tynemouth area, owned coal rights, and were bought out by Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland.[47] The Grey family resided in Weymouth Street off Portland Place in London, in 1809.[48]

The couple lived in Italy from 1844 to 1846, and their only son Ralph, who became an army officer, was born there.[44] Their daughter Minna Frances married in 1888 the Rev. Vivian Eccles Skrine.[49][50] Their other daughter, Alice Jane, died unmarried in 1921.[49] Charles George Vivian, son of Vivian's younger brother the Rev. Charles Pasley Vivian who died in 1841, entered Rugby School in 1847 as Vivian's ward.[51][52]

Ralph Vivian, 1883 caricature

Ralph Vivian (1845–1924) served in the Scots Guards in the British Conquest of Egypt (1882).[53] He retired from the Army in 1883, and became a director of the machine tool company Greenwood & Batley in 1888.[54] In 1892 he married Susan Lawrence née Endicott, widow of Marshall Owen Roberts.[49]