Sir Robert Smirke
b. London, 1780;
d. Tunbridge Wells, 1867.

Sir Robert Smirke - Prolific 19-Century English famous architect of the Greek Revival, architect of the British Museum. Smirke spent five years travelling in Europe and set up in practice in London in 1805. He was fortunate in having powerful patrons among the ruling Tories, thanks to his father, a prominent figure in the Royal Academy. Lowther Castle was his first important commission, and his reputation was established by the innovative Covent Garden Theatre. By 1815, at the age of thirty-five, he had reached the top of his profession as one of three architects attached to the Office of Works. Smirke was a fashionable and prolific architect; he designed several Neo-Gothic castle-houses, but they are less significant than his Greek Revival works, which are part of the mainstream of European Neo-Classicism. However, despite the success of the British Museum and his London clubs, Smirke never fully achieved a balance between archaeological accuracy and the need to innovate for new building types. His influence was also to channel the Greek Revival away from the geometrical possibilities and abstraction of the cubic forms seen in his early Covent Garden into archaeological copying and revivalism. Technically, however, Smirke was a great innovator and was the first British architect to make use of cast iron and concrete for load-bearing foundations.

Major buildings / works:
Lowther Castle, Cumbria, 1806-11.
Covent Garden Theatre, London, 1808-10.
Luton Hoo, Beds., c.1816-1842.
British Museum, London, 1823?46.
Council House, Bristol, 1824-7.
Oxford and Cambridge Club, London, 1836-7.

Bibliography:
J. Mordaunt Crook, The British Museum, London, 1972
J. Mordaunt Crook, The Greek Revival, London, 1972.