Roy Strong

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Roy Strong

Sir Roy Strong (born August 23, 1935 in Winchmore Hill , Middlesex ) is a British art historian .

Life

Roy Strong is the third son of Representative George Edward Clement Strong and his wife Mabel Ada Smart. Strong describes his father as a "failure" and an alcoholic with no intellectual interests who bullied his wife and ignored the children. The family lived in a 1928 settlement on Winchmore Hill , Enfield , where his father planted a garden which, however, had to give way to vegetable patches as part of the "Dig for Victory" campaign in World War II. Strong soon broke off contact with his parents. He studied history at Queen Mary College of the University of London and became the Warburg Institute PhD. His dissertation with Frances Yates on court life with Elizabeth I. It also dealt with her portraits. In 1959 he became a curator (Assistant Keeper) at the National Portrait Gallery and was its director from 1967 to 1973. There he organized exhibitions on the culture of the 1960s and 1970s, for example in 1968 about the photographer Cecil Beaton , which was very successful and refreshed the dusty image of the museum. In 1973 he became the youngest director of the Victoria & Albert Museum , which he remained until 1987. Here, too, he continued his innovative concept of presenting everyday culture , organizing exhibitions on fashion, garden art, the future of churches and the destruction of country houses.

He is an expert on the art of the Renaissance, especially the England of the Elizabethan period and their portraits (e.g. Nicholas Hilliard ). He published diaries, a history of gardens and the British monarchy, and a history of art of England.

Strong was married to the set designer Julia Trevelyan Oman (1930-2003), a daughter of the art historian Charles Oman (1901-1982) and granddaughter of the historian Charles Oman (1860-1946). The marriage was childless.

He had a column in the Financial Times in the 1970s and 1980s . In 2008, he was a Channel 4 host for a six-part television series as the fictional director of an institute in which nine volunteers submitted to diet regulations from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Honors and honorary positions

In 1980 he received the Shakespeare Prize in Hamburg. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and received its President's Medal. In 1982 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . From 2000 to 2006 he was chairman of the Garden History Society . He is an active member of the Anglican Church and is a High Bailiff and Searcher of the Sanctuary at Westminster Abbey . In 2007 he gave the Gresham Lecture on the not very bright future of the many village churches in England in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral .

"The Laskett" garden

During a wave of strikes in the early 1970s, Strong withdrew from his house in Brixton , which he had bought in 1969 , to avoid feared unrest and food shortages in London. He couldn't afford the classic Cotswolds country estate his father-in-law owned, so he ended up buying a detached house in Much Birch in Herefordshire, which reminded him of a parsonage from a Jane Austen novel.

Around the house "The Laskett" he and his wife created an approximately 1.6 hectare large formal garden which contains numerous biographical elements. Among other things, there was a Victoria and Albert Museum Temple, with the portrait of Strong between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as the central medal. He published a richly illustrated book about this garden in 2004. The garden was open to paying groups of visitors and also had the obligatory gift shop. After the death of Julia Ormond, Strong simplified the plantings a lot, in his opinion women are "simply better with details". The heavily overgrown garden was repeatedly criticized by disappointed visitors and had to be severely cut back and cleaned in a major action, several larger trees were felled. This also became the subject of a photo book. In 2018 he had a white Belvedere built in the tree garden ("Christmas Orchard") , a grotto and a pond followed.

Strong tried to hand the garden over to the National Trust in 2014, but the latter declined because the garden did not meet its quality criteria. The indignant Strong initially intended to destroy his garden. In 2020, however, he handed the house and garden over to the Perennial charitable foundation and moved into a house in Ledbury , where he plans to create a small formal garden.

style

The Laskett is designed in neo-classical Italian style, with numerous intersecting lines of sight, at the end of which there is usually a monument or a statue. Due to a lack of money, these were usually made from cheap materials and therefore resemble stage staffage. However, no savings were made on gold leaf. The garden is designed in a very small space and is dominated by high hedges, some of which are claustrophobic . He also lived out his lifelong passion for topiary . Strong himself described the garden as " unashamedly nostalgic and romantic " ( Roy Strong , German: "uninhibited nostalgic, romantic") and autobiographical. The facility was described by professional garden designers as “ too much of everything ” ( Emma Bond : thinkinGardens, German: “too much of everything”) and “ ostentatiousness ” ( Anne Wareham : House & Garden, German: “Boasting”), others saw it as amusing and eccentric. The professional gardening world largely ignored him.

In his books too, Strong propagates a pseudo-classical style that he tries to adapt to smaller properties. The proposed planting is extremely conventional, box and yew hedges are the predominant design element.

Fonts

  • Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. Clarendon Press 1963.
  • The English Icon, Paul Mellon Foundation. London 1969.
  • Tudor & Jacobean Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, 2 volumes, HMSO, London 1969.
  • Nicholas Hilliard, London: Michael Joseph Ltd, 1975.
  • The Renaissance Garden in England, London 1979.
  • Artists of the Tudor Court: The Portrait Miniature Rediscovered 1520–1620, Exhibition Catalog V & A London 1983
  • Creating Small Gardens, London: Conran Octopus 1986
  • A Small Garden Designer's Handbook, London: Conran Octopus 1987
  • Henry Prince of Wales & England's Lost Renaissance, Thames & Hudson, London 1986
  • with Mireille Galinou ,: London's Pride: Glorious History of the Capital's Gardens. Anaya Publishers 1990.
  • Lost Treasures of Britain: Five Centuries of Creation and Destruction, London, Viking 1990
  • The Tudor and Stuart Monarchy: Pageantry, Painting, Iconography, Volume 1, The Boydell Press 1990
  • Royal Gardens. Londnon, BBC Books 1992.
  • Succesful small gardens. Conran Octopus 1994.
  • William Larkin: Icons of Splendor Franco Maria Ricci, 1995.
  • Country Life, 1897-1997: The English Arcadia, 1996
  • The Tudor and Stuart Monarchy: Pageantry, Painting, Iconography, Volume 2 Elizabethan, The Boydell Press 1996
  • The Roy Strong Diaries 1967–1987, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997
  • The Tudor and Stuart Monarchy: Pageantry, Painting, Iconography, Volume 3, Jacobean and Caroline, The Boydell Press 1997
  • The Story of Britain: A People's History, 1998
  • The Roy Strong Diaries: 1967-87. Phoenix 1998.
  • The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry, 1999.
  • The Spirit of Britain: A Narrative History of the Arts, 1999.
  • The Artist & the Garden, Yale University Press (Paul Mellon Center for Studies), 2000
  • Gardens through the Ages, 2000
  • Feast: A History of Grand Eating, 2003
  • Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, 2003
  • The Arts in Britain: A History, 2004
  • The Laskett: The Story of a Garden . Bantam, London 2003, ISBN 0-593-05070-3 (English, 272 pages).
  • with Terence Pepper: Beaton Portraits, 2004.
  • Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy, 2005.
  • Passions Past and Present, 2005.
  • The Diary of John Evelyn, 2006.
  • A Little History of the English Country Church, Vintage 2008.
  • Visions of England: Or why we still dream of a Place in the Country. Miles Kelly 2012.
  • Roy Strong: Self-Portrait as a Young Man. Bodleian Library 2013.

Web links

  • Roy Strong. In: Archive Collections. Paul Mellon Center(English).;
  • The Laskett Gardens. (English, garden laid out by Roy Strong and his wife Julia Trevelyan Oman).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roy Strong: How I fled the curse of my AWFUL family: Sir Roy Strong reveals his humble beginnings, blighted by the cruel father he hated and a violently deranged brother. In: Daily Mail . March 2, 2013, accessed August 30, 2020 .
  2. ↑ The Laskett: The Story of a Garden. London, Bantam Press 2003, p. 23.
  3. ↑ The Laskett: The Story of a Garden. London, Bantam Press 2003, pp. 23-24.
  4. ↑ The Laskett: The Story of a Garden. London, Bantam Press 2003, p. 16.
  5. ↑ The Laskett: The Story of a Garden, London, Bantam Press 2003, pp 22nd
  6. ↑ The Laskett: The Story of a Garden , Bantam Press, London of 2003.
  7. ↑ Robin Lane Fox, When it's time to leave your beloved garden behind. Financial Times 28/08/2020, https://www.ft.com/content/d1931276-3cfe-49df-93e1-7db94b9ce73c
  8. ^ A b Anne Wareham: The emperor's new weeds. In: The Spectator . October 29, 2011, accessed August 30, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Published again in Anne Wareham: If you tell a lie big enough… by Anne Wareham. In: Veddw House Garden. Anne Wareham, July 9, 2013, accessed August 30, 2020 .
  10. ^ A b Emma Bond: The Laskett reviewed by Emma Bond. In: thinkinGardens. July 8, 2011, accessed August 30, 2020 .
  11. ^ Roy Strong: Remaking a Garden - The Laskett transformed . Frances Lincoln, London 2014, ISBN 978-0-7112-3396-6 (English).
  12. ^ A b Nicola Fifield: Sir Roy Strong to destroy his famous gardens after snub from the National Trust. In: The Telegraph . October 12, 2014, accessed August 30, 2020 .
  13. ^ Sir Roy Strong bequeaths The Laskett Gardens to Perennial, safeguarding them for the next generation. In: Perennial. Accessed August 30, 2020 (English).
  14. ↑ Robin Lane Fox, When it's time to leave your beloved garden behind. Financial Times 28/08/2020, https://www.ft.com/content/d1931276-3cfe-49df-93e1-7db94b9ce73c
  15. ↑ a b Clare Foster: At the Laskett Sir Roy Strong has created a garden that is 'a voyage of the mind'. In: House & Garden. Accessed August 30, 2020 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Strong, Roy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English art historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Winchmore Hill , Middlesex