Queen Anne Style

Definition

The Queen Anne style names the English architectural and decorative movement of the 1870s that took the domestic brick-and-wood buildings of the early eighteenth century — "the style of house which was built during the eighteenth century, whose walls were of brick, and whose staircases were of wood (the houses, that is, which are now designated 'Queen Anne')" — as its model, against the Gothic Revival's stone-built ecclesiastical manner. In this wiki the style enters as the professional banner of the Garrett cousins: the Intimus editors report that in their writing the Garretts "appropriate the discourse of Charles Eastlake and relegate it to the past, while promoting the 'Queen Anne' style as the way forward" (p. 110), and their Introduction places them in the style's defense by opening with a reference to J. J. Stevenson's 1874 paper on "the Queen Anne Style of Architecture" — "By defending and defining the style 'to the study of which the Miss Garretts have devoted their attention,' they place themselves immediately in the context of their professional life" (Ferry, p. 114). The style's domestic-decorative programme, as the Garretts execute it in 'Houses As They Might Be', is "neutral tones, harmonious drapery in soft velvets and simple, well-constructed furniture based on eighteenth century models" (Ferry, p. 112) — the redecorated Drawing Room becoming "an affordably 'Queen Anne' style 'shrine'" (p. 113). Its argumentative edge is a suitability claim (the style fits "ordinary English houses" and available materials, against the Gothic's sham stucco) and an appeal to national character ("the solid and unpretentious style so much in accordance with the best characteristics of the English people," Garretts, quoted p. 114).

Key Thinkers

• Rhoda and Agnes Garrett — the style's interior defenders and practitioners (1876): its application to room decoration (neutral tones, soft velvets, eighteenth-century-model furniture), its suitability argument against the Gothic Revival, and its national-character appeal (PAGE NEEDED — see log).
• J. J. Stevenson — the style's architectural theorist: his 1874 paper "on the Queen Anne Style of Architecture" (Building News, 26 June 1874) is the text the Garretts' Introduction opens by referencing; his planned Domestic Architecture volume was to "apply the same principles to the exterior that are here applied to the interior of our houses" (Loftie's advertisement, Ferry note 30, p. 116) (PAGE NEEDED — see log).
• Emma Ferry — the style's interior-side historian: the reading that connects the Garretts' style-advocacy to their professional self-placement and their relegation of Eastlake's discourse to the past (2003/2006).
• Mark Girouard — the style's historiographer: Sweetness and Light: The 'Queen Anne Movement' 1860–1900 (1984), whose analysis of "the English Aesthete" explains the movement's temporal signature — "As an antidote to the present they recreated the past as an ideal world of pre-industrial simplicity, at once homely and Arcadian" (quoted in Ferry note 23, p. 115) (PAGE NEEDED — see log).
• Charles L. Eastlake — the displaced predecessor: the reform discourse the Queen Anne movement appropriated and "relegate[d] to the past"; himself a Gothic Revival practitioner whose Hints the Garretts imitate while rejecting his style allegiance.

Related Concepts

• Style — the concept's genus: a chooseable, nameable, debatable manner — the Queen Anne controversy being exactly the "heated debate" of the architectural world the Garretts entered to establish professional standing.
• Stylistic Unity — the style's aim in the interior: the "harmonious whole" the house decorator works toward, the house-wide coherence Eastlake prescribed and the Garretts achieved in the new style's name.
• Design Reform — the movement-context: Queen Anne as the reform programme's second style-wave — Eastlake's simple, honest furniture-principles carried into a new historical manner, with the anti-sham argument (stucco vs stone) retained from the reform's moral core.
• Suitability — the style's argumentative instrument: the claim that Queen Anne is "more suitable than the so-called Gothic house" for "ordinary English houses" — style-choice justified by fitness to house-type, materials and national character, not by period-piety.
• House Decorator — the style's professional carrier: the Garretts' "devotion" to the style is what places them "in the context of their professional life" — style-advocacy as professional credential.
• Simplicity — the style's interior signature: "simple and direct in its outline" furniture, "simple, well-constructed" eighteenth-century models, the "solid and unpretentious" manner.
• Separate Spheres — the style's site: the redecorated domestic interior — dining room and drawing room — as the field where the style's Utopian vision is executed against the resistant Paterfamilias.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• 'Decorators May be Compared to Doctors' (Ferry 2003/2006) — the primary and sole direct source: the editors' framing (appropriation and relegation of Eastlake; Queen Anne "as the way forward," p. 110); 'Houses As They Might Be' as "the most important section… for appreciating the style the Garretts produced" (p. 112); the style's interior programme (neutral tones, soft velvets, eighteenth-century models, p. 112); the Drawing Room's "Queen Anne" shrine (p. 113); the suitability argument against the Gothic house (p. 114); the sham-materials note (stucco vs stone, note 32, p. 116); the national-character appeal (p. 114); Stevenson's 1874 paper and the professional self-placement (p. 114); Girouard's Arcadian-antidote analysis (note 23, p. 115); Mrs Orrinsmith's companion 'Art at Home' volume (note 10, p. 115).
• The Dining Room (Eastlake 1868/2006) — the displaced discourse and the Gothic Revival context: Eastlake worked "in the revived Early English or 'Modern Gothic' idiom" and wrote A History of the Gothic Revival (1872) — the style allegiance the Garretts' Queen Anne advocacy replaces while inheriting his reform principles.

Open Questions

• What exactly was "Queen Anne" in 1876? The label covers a historical revival (early eighteenth-century brick domestic architecture), an architectural manner (Stevenson, Norman Shaw), and an interior-decorative programme (the Garretts' neutral tones and eighteenth-century furniture). Are these one style or a family — and does the wiki need the architectural side (Stevenson, Shaw) to answer?
• Girouard's "ideal world of pre-industrial simplicity, at once homely and Arcadian" and the Garretts' "idealized historical vision" of the home as site of production: is the style's nostalgia politically ambivalent — progressive in its professional gender politics, conservative in its social imaginary? See domestic-economy, domestic-feminism.
• The Garretts argue a style's suitability by materials and house-type ("for ordinary English houses… more suitable than the so-called Gothic house") — is this the advice literature's first style-selection criterion, prefiguring the modernist truth-to-materials argument it superficially resembles?
• The style was "the way forward" in 1876 and a period label thereafter. What does a style's career — reform banner, professional credential, heritage shorthand — do to the wiki's style and fashion analysis when its own history is the datum?