Brunswick Square The Sparrow and the Corinthian Dog Rose

Print description

Two sparrows rest on a rose branch in front of the top floor of a terraced house in Brunswick Square in Brighton. Between a pair of fluted Corinthian columns with Acanthus leaves, a small sash window echoes histories from centuries ago out of sight behind curtains looking out to sea.

This print is close to my heart for many reasons. I live in Brunswick Square in Brighton, I am an architect, I love classic architecture. I grew up near the Roman ruins of Baelo Claudia, Italica and my playground was the Roman Museum in Seville. I love the humble noisy sparrows, often seen in Brunswick noisy as bells. A flock of sparrows can be called very descriptively a knot, flutter, host, quarrel, or crew.
I love early 19th century natural illustration where plants, animals and architectural elements are bound together to create compositions. An early rose is also shown in this print. Roses full of symbolism and beauty.

Print details

I created this print from my original ink drawings to which I apply colour digitally. Printed on fine art paper using archival inks. I issue the formats A0, A1 & A2,A3 and A4  as limited editions of 100 where I individually sign and number each print.

Art prints inspired by the natural word and the study of bird illustrations

In January 2021, in a second-hand bookshop I found the second volume of a lavish 1966 publication that reproduced the famous original watercolour paintings by John James Audubon for ‘Birds of America’. I was surprised to realise that to complete one of his designs could take years and often various artists would be involved. Audubon would create the main image and other artists would do the plants and another would add the landscape. With this mindset I have created a collection of prints that follow this system and create a scene that collages a landscape or habitat with its characteristic plants and birds. The results are a print that echoes a theatre stage design where each subject is depicted at its best in unison.

Brunswick Square

Originally, the area had been part of Wick Farm. Then in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, nearby Brighton had become very fashionable, especially amongst the top tier of British society. The Kemp Town estate there had been a success, and so in 1824 architect Charles Busby entered into an agreement to build houses on land lying at the extreme east of Hove, adjacent to Brighton — land which belonged to Thomas Read Kemp, creator of Kemp Town. The name “Brunswick” was presumably taken from House of Brunswick, a term sometimes used for the House of Hanover, the name of the British royal family at the time.

Brunswick Town was built as a collaborative project between the architect C A Busby and the landowner Reverend Thomas Scutt (also a clergyman). Construction started in 1824. The first houses were completed by 1826. September in fact.

Busby designed Brunswick Town as a long row of terraced houses facing the sea. In the middle point of this sea-facing terrace was a central square, which stretched back. This square was named Brunswick Square. The terraced houses, in Brunswick Terrace and in Brunswick Square, were built for the upper classes, they were designed as ‘first class’ housing. Beyond these houses were second classes houses in streets such as Waterloo Street.

Facilities including a market were provided. The market, opened in 1828, was funded by Busby himself but was not a success and was converted to a riding school in the 1840s. It is now a theatre.

In the late 1990s the top of Brunswick Square, where it meets busy Western Road, was closed to motor traffic, changing the nature of the square from a through route to a strictly residential area.

At the extreme eastern edge of Brunswick Terrace, on the border of Hove and Brighton, the bluntly modernist Embassy Court apartment block was refurbished in the mid-2000s. When originally envisaged in the 1930s, this lone block was imagined as the beginning of a transformation of the entire seafront, which would have entailed the obliteration of Brunswick Terrace. By the late 1940s Brunswick Square itself had become so run-down that the Council was considering wholesale demolition and redevelopment with modern housing. (Source – Wiki Pedia)

The Corinthian Order of Greek architecture

Unlike the Doric and Ionic orders, the Corinthian Order does not have its origin in wooden architecture, having grown directly out of the Ionic Order in the mid-5th century BCE. Taking its name from the city of Corinth, the Corinthian Order can be distinguished from the Ionic Order by its more ornate capitals carved with stylized acanthus leaves.

On the Corinthian entablature, the frieze was usually decorated with continual sculptural reliefs, where the figures were raised from the surface but not completely freestanding.