John Yenn architectural and design drawings

Collection

Identifier: GRA 0129

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This volume of architectural and furniture design drawings by English architect John Yenn was created between the 1760s and 1790s. It includes designs for Carlton House, Blenheim Palace, Ealing Grove, Marlborough House, Woodstock Church, Grantham House, North Aston Hall, Kensington Gardens, and several unidentified residences.

The designs in this volume are ink drawings, many of which were hand-colored with watercolor. The architectural designs for the Porter’s Lodge at Carlton House were likely executed under the guidance of Yenn’s mentor, architect Sir William Chambers (1723-1796). Many of the designs relate to the residences of the 4th Duke of Marlborough, George Spencer. For Blenheim Palace, Yenn designed the Temple of Health, lodges for Ditchley Gate, and a mahogany library table (ca. 1770s-1789). For Marlborough House, he designed an observatory, saloon, drawing room, and anteroom to the drawing room (ca. 1780s). At the Duke’s residence Ealing Grove, Yenn designed several pieces of furniture for the dining room, library, and drawing room (ca. 1780). These included a writing table, oval looking glasses, and pedestal with a vase that would hold and dispense water.

Yenn also designed a new aisle and tower for Woodstock Church in Oxfordshire, close to the Duke’s residence at Blenheim (ca. 1783). The aisle included plain arches with tall, rounded windows along a paneled gallery. His design for the church tower featured an arched door surrounded by rusticated quoins, arched windows, and a crenellated top. It is probable that Yenn’s design for the tower was never executed. Architects Stephen Townesend and John Church built a new tower for Woodstock Church between 1784 and 1786.

Several drawings of garden and alcove seats for Kensington Gardens were likely made after Yenn was appointed Clerk of the Works in 1782. Yenn also completed work on North Aston Hall and Grantham House at Whitehall in the early 1780s. This volume includes his designs for a porch and hall at North Aston, as well as drawings of chimneys for the music room and library. Yenn’s designs for Grantham House include a covered passage of communication and furniture pieces for the front parlor, dining room, and state dressing room. Yenn noted on his drawing of an elevation for the passage of communication that “Mr. Austin has these mouldings the real size.” It is possible that Yenn was referring to George Austin, the carpenter at Blenheim Palace.

The volume includes several designs for unidentified residences, including a house on Charlotte Street. On a drawing of a clock case, Yenn noted that it was “Executed in Mahogany for the Rt Honble Lord Clive Ao 1782.” Yenn likely referred to Edward Clive, later Earl of Powis. Design drawings for unidentified residences include a table frame, several doorways, a mirror surmounted by an earl’s coronet, and a barometer.

The volume received conservation treatment from the Center for Conservation of Art and Historic Artifacts in 1994. The volume is bound in gray cloth and features the words “Holland, Henry/Drawings” in black print on the spine. It contains 38 leaves of designs, many with drawings on both the recto and verso.

Dates

Creation: approximately 1764-1790

Creator

Yenn, John, 1750-1821 (Person)

Language of Materials

Materials entirely in English.

Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. Please contact Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library, https://library.udel.edu/static/purl.php?askspec

John Yenn

English architect John Yenn was born on March 8, 1750, probably in London. He became a pupil of Scottish-Swedish architect Sir William Chambers in 1764, and several drawings in this volume suggest that he assisted Chambers with the design of a porter’s lodge for Carlton House in Pall Mall during the 1760s. Yenn became a student at the Royal Academy of the Arts in 1769 and won the school’s Gold Medal in 1771. He was admitted as a member of the Academy in 1774 and became a full academician in 1791. In 1796, Yenn succeeded Chambers to become the second treasurer of Academy, a post he held until 1820. He was a member of the Association of Architects along with Chambers and Sir John Soane.

Following the completion of his studies, Yenn began working with Chambers on various architectural projects for the 4th Duke of Marlborough, George Spencer. He succeeded Chambers as the Duke’s architect at Blenheim Palace in the late 1770s. In addition to redesigning the Palace’s Ditchley Gate in 1781, Yenn designed Blenheim’s Temple of Health in 1789 to celebrate King George III’s recovery from illness. In the same period, Yenn designed furniture and architectural elements for the Duke’s residences at Marlborough House and Ealing Grove. During the early 1780s, Yenn also worked on Grantham House in Whitehall for the 2nd Lord Grantham and North Aston Hall in Oxfordshire, the home of Oldfield Bowles. In 1783, he redesigned the north aisle of Woodstock Church near Blenheim. His plans for the church’s tower were never executed.

Through his connection to Chambers, Yenn received several prestigious offices. He was appointed Clerk of the Works for Somerset House (1776), Richmond Park (1780), Kensington Palace (1782), Buckingham House (1782), and Royal Mews (1782). Although his executed architectural designs have garnered little praise, John Harris, former Curator of Drawings at the Royal Institute of British Architects, hailed his architectural drawings as “supreme examples” of the genre that elevated him “to the status of the finest draughtsman of the century.”

Yenn died on March 1, 1821.

SOURCES:

Baggs, A.P., W.J. Blair, Eleanor Chance, Christina Colvin, Janet Cooper, C. J. Day, Nesta Selwyn and S. C. Townley. “Blenheim: Park from 1705.” In A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 12, Wootton Hundred (South) Including Woodstock, edited by Alan Crossley and C R Elrington, 460-470. London: Victoria County History, 1990.

Baggs, A.P., W.J. Blair, Eleanor Chance, Christina Colvin, Janet Cooper, C. J. Day, Nesta Selwyn and S. C. Townley. “Woodstock: Church.” In A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 12, Wootton Hundred (South) Including Woodstock, edited by Alan Crossley and C R Elrington, 406-414. London: Victoria County History, 1990.

Colvin, Howard. A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1978.

Green, David, James Bond, and Hal Moggridge. “After Capability Brown: Blenheim in the Later Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.” In Blenheim: Landscape for a Palace, edited by James Bond and Kate Tiller. Phoenix Mill, UK: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1997.

Roberts, Jane. “Sir William Chambers and George III.” Sir William Chambers: Architect to George III, 41-54. Edited by John Harris and Michael Snodin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Enfilade, “John Yenn’s Architectural Drawings (https://enfilade18thc.com/tag/john-yenn-r-a/) (accessed 10/16/17)

Parks & Gardens UK, “John Yenn—Summary” (http://www.parksandgardens.org/places-and-people/person/1550) (accessed 10/16/17)

Royal Academy of Arts Collections, “John Yenn, R.A.” (http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXACTION_=file&_IXFILE_=templates/full/person.html&person=6001) (accessed 10/16/2017)

Information derived from the collection.

A Note on Provenance and Attribution

The Library's collection folder contains a typed note by Maurice Krakow of the Architectural Book Publishing Company of New York, New York, which accompanied this volume. Krakow stated that the drawings were “undoubtedly original working drawings from the office of Henry Holland,” and appended a biographical note on Holland from Joseph Gwilt’s An Encyclopedia of Architecture, Historical, Theoretical, and Practical (1842). Holland was a contemporary of Yenn and was known for his designs for Dover House (1786), Drury Lane Theatre (1791), and the original “Pavilion” at Brighton (1800). Holland also redesigned the interiors of Carlton House in the late 1780s. It is possible that this volume was misattributed to Holland’s office because it includes two architectural drawings of Carlton House. However, the verso of one of these drawings features designs for Woodstock Church, a Yenn project with no connection to Holland. Because of the attribution to Holland, his name was included on the volume’s spine when it underwent conservation treatment in the 1990s and received a new cloth case binding.