Francis Fowke: Innovative architect of our national gallery

Architect and engineer Francis Fowke, who was from Co Antrim and was born 200 years ago on July 7th, achieved much in his comparatively short life, including designing the National Gallery of Ireland and London’s Albert Hall. Although his main stylistic influence came from the Renaissance, he incorporated new technologies into his work as well.

He was born in Ballysillan, Belfast, the elder of two sons of Lieut John Fowke and his first wife, Jane Ferguson. After attending the Royal School Dungannon, Co Tyrone, he went to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, London, from where he was first commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1842, rising to the rank of captain in 1854. During service in Bermuda, he distinguished himself as a military architect and, on returning to England, he was given responsibility for the construction of several government buildings, including Raglan Barracks at Devonport, Plymouth (since demolished). He was in charge of the British machinery shown at the 1854 Paris Universal Exhibition and was afterwards made secretary of the British commission to the exhibition, for which he was awarded chevalier de la Légion d’honneur.

As a member of the science and art department in London (1857-1865), he was sent to Dublin as inspector to report on the plans for the National Gallery of Ireland, which had become bogged down in problems of delay, high costs and concerns about the designs of the civil engineer and architect, Charles Lanyon. Fowke greatly changed Lanyon’s designs, intending to create as functional a building as possible within the financial and space confines caused by the Leinster Lawn site. He reproduced the exact external dimensions of the nearby Natural History Museum (completed in 1857) to create the appearance of a symmetrical arrangement.

Internally, there was notable innovation in his designs. “He introduced significant innovations in construction [using possibly for the first time in Ireland an early form of reinforced concrete, the patented Fox & Barrett system], in ventilation and in lighting – the great picture room contained 2,000 gas jets suspended from a massive oblong frame,” according to Helen Andrews, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.

Rings of ire – Frank McNally on the limitations of smart watches

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Footman Footnotes – Frank McNally on the late and very colourful Gillies MacBain

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Front Woman – Frank McNally on a pioneering war correspondent, Maggie Higgins

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‘The trial of the century’ – Frank McNally on a notorious child murder of 100 years ago

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When the gallery was opened on January 30th, 1864, the press response was enthusiastic, this paper describing the Sculpture Hall as “elegantly arranged, beautifully proportioned and admirably adapted to its purpose”. But the Irish architectural establishment, possibly feeling slighted that its members had been overlooked in favour of an outsider, was not impressed. A paper read to the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland referred to the “meanness of the entrance... the intensely ugly, awkward and dangerous staircase leading to the picture galleries”; it considered the new gallery “the work of an amateur... a bad building... a national gallery of the fine arts from which architecture is excluded”.

Fowke continued to be promoted, becoming superintendent of buildings, in which capacity he was involved in the cultural complex being developed in South Kensington, London. As superintendent of the South Kensington (Victoria and Albert) Museum (completed by Aston Webb, who also designed the main facade at Buckingham Palace), he designed the Sheepshanks and other art galleries, lecture theatre and courtyards and the Royal Horticultural Society’s conservatory and arcades.

For the 1862 international exhibition in South Kensington, which featured more than 28,000 exhibitors from 36 countries and attracted 6 million plus visitors, he designed the building that housed it but the Art Journal rather harshly condemned it as “a wretched shed” and it was demolished in 1864. Nevertheless, he went on to win the competition for the Natural History Museum (1864) but died before it could be adopted, and his designs were substantially altered. His design for the Albert Hall (1867-71), which Helen Andrews described as “outstanding”, was implemented posthumously.

Fowke also acquired patents for a remarkably wide range of inventions, including a military fire-engine, a folding umbrella camera, a portable rubber bath, mobile scaffolding and a collapsible military pontoon-bridge, according to the Belfast News Letter (June 5th, 2020).

He married Louisa Charlotte Rede in 1845; their second child, Frank Rede Fowke, became secretary at the board of education. He died suddenly on December 4th, 1865, at the young age of 42, at his official residence in South Kensington and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. The British art patron, inventor and educator, Sir Henry Cole, paid him this tribute: “England has lost a man who felt the spirit of his age, and was daring enough to venture beyond the beaten path of conventionalism... a man of science, possessing a fertility of invention which amounted to genius.”