Castles in the Air: Philip Webb's Rejected Commission for the Earl and Countess of Airlie

Abstract

Almost all of Philip Webb’s work was for a small circle of artists and art-patrons known to one another and, in some cases, related. His reluctance to accept commissions from clients whose taste and judgement were not in sympathy with his has been well documented. He was consistently retiring and self-contained, and during his entire life-work of forty years only fifty to sixty complete buildings, large and small, were erected, an unusually small number. Those who trusted him acquired houses which were unique, each reflecting their own lifestyles and the characteristics of the chosen location; houses which possessed, according to the late John Brandon-Jones, ‘a feeling of reality and solidity that contrasted with the scenic effects achieved by his rivals’ (Fig. 1).