Hers and His Fitzherbert and George IV Brighton Pavilion Pebble Beach

Print description

This architectural print of Steine Gardens in Brighton focusses on the residences of  George IV’s Brighton Royal Pavilion and his life companion and later wife Maria Fitzherbert’s Steine House. Hence the naming of this print ‘Hers and His’ as a reference to the residences of the historic most famous couple in Brighton. This print shows the architectural elevation drawings of The Brighton Royal Pavilion, Palace Place, Castle Square, the Old Steine and Marlborough House.

Print details

Panoramic format. Print size 124 x 30.5 cm approx. Signed print from a limited edition of 100. From original ink drawing to which I apply colour digitally. Printed on fine art paper using archival inks.

The Brighton Royal Pavilion

The Royal Pavilion is owned by the City of Brighton and Hove. Today it is a wonderful museum and art venue. You can get married and have your photograph of your wedding taken in the music room. The best kept secret: did you know you can have your Christmas dinner in the Banquet room?

Architect John Nash changed the external appearance and remodelled The Brighton Royal Pavilion in Indo-Saracenic style. The works of the Marine Pavilion began in 1815 and took seven years to complete. George chose John who proposed an Indian style in response to the design of the new stable block; today’s Corn Exchange and Dome Theatre.

Nash found inspiration for this fairy tale’ style design in published designs for a new palace based on Indian architectural forms by landscape gardener Humphrey Repton and ‘Oriental Scenery’ by Thomas and William Daniell.

Historic England has a very academic entry that describes the complexity of the Royal Pavilion. As a curiosity I have picked the following architectural style terms from their description: trilobed heads, octagonal socle, leafy base, octagonal shaft, and flaring, leaf capitals which terminate above the diamond crenellated parapet in octagonal pinnacles, pierced quatrefoils, intersecting S-curves, horseshoe arches; convex, feathered ring, topped by a fluted ring; Gothic quatrefoil panels. Lotus-leaf parapet continuous across the elevation;  onion domes and all that Jazz!

Steine house

In 1785 George fell in love with Maria Fitzherbert, a widowed Roman Catholic. They married illegally in December 1785. She first visited Brighton the following year. The royal couple sought a site for a permanent home for Mrs Fitzherbert, and in 1804 she commissioned the Prince’s favoured architect William Porden to design and build a house on the west side of Old Steine.

The building is now owned and used by Brighton YMCA. The work done to Steine House in 1927 changed its original appearance. It now presents a façade of white-painted brick with some stucco work.

Marlborough House

Marlborough House is a mansion at 54, Old Steine. It is a Grade I listed building. Built for Samuel Shergold in the 1760s. The Duke of Marlborough was its third owner and in 1786 William Gerard Hamilton bought it and altered to a neoclassical design by Robert Adam. It came to the hands of a Brighton School Board and Brighton and Hove City Council who consequently sold it to a local businessman in 1999.

This architectural print belongs to a tonal collection that I have named ‘Pebble Beach’. The palette for this collection reflects the variation of colours and tones in the beach pebbles that can be found along the East Sussex Coast. The pebbles are flint, a hard grey rock that was deposited in the chalk cliffs; through natural erosion the flints are released from the cliffs and slowly make their way through a natural process to form the pebble beaches.