Sir Howard Colvin: Architectural historian whose biographical dictionaries laid a foundation for all other scholars in his field
Howard Montagu Colvin, historian: born Sidcup, Kent 15 October 1919; Assistant Lecturer in History, University College London 1946-48; Fellow, St John's College, Oxford 1948-87 (Emeritus), Tutor in History 1948-78, Librarian 1950-84; CBE 1964; Reader in Architectural History, Oxford University 1965-87; President, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1979-81; CVO 1983; Kt 1995; married 1943 Christina Butler (died 2003; two sons); died Oxford 28 December 2007.
Howard Colvin was the greatest architectural historian of his own time, and perhaps ever. He admired his seniors Sir Nikolaus Pevsner and Sir John Summerson, but both of them were indebted to him for the factual basis on which their judgements were formed; revising Summerson's 1945 Georgian London in 2001, Colvin wrote "[its] combination of brilliant thought and writing with factual carelessness is quite difficult to handle".
The intellectual model whom he regarded as almost faultless was Robert Willis, whose Architectural History of the University of Cambridge (1886) pioneered the solution of archaeological problems by absolute mastery of the documentation, yet Colvin's six-volume History of the King's Works (1963-1982) alone was a greater achievement than Willis's. In addition, Colvin produced what might have remained the authoritative Biographical Dictionary of English Architects 1660-1840 in 1954, had he not expanded it to include Scotland and the years 1600-1660 in 1978 (with the title A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840), and brought out a revised edition in 1995.
It is possible for the very well-informed and very diligent to find an error, or even two, in 1,264 double-column pages of 10-point text, but difficult – and unusual. At the time of his death, Howard Colvin had nearly completed proof-reading the fourth version of this astonishing work, whose versions since 1954 have been the starting point of all historical research on the architecture of early modern Britain....
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
Howard Colvin was the greatest architectural historian of his own time, and perhaps ever. He admired his seniors Sir Nikolaus Pevsner and Sir John Summerson, but both of them were indebted to him for the factual basis on which their judgements were formed; revising Summerson's 1945 Georgian London in 2001, Colvin wrote "[its] combination of brilliant thought and writing with factual carelessness is quite difficult to handle".
The intellectual model whom he regarded as almost faultless was Robert Willis, whose Architectural History of the University of Cambridge (1886) pioneered the solution of archaeological problems by absolute mastery of the documentation, yet Colvin's six-volume History of the King's Works (1963-1982) alone was a greater achievement than Willis's. In addition, Colvin produced what might have remained the authoritative Biographical Dictionary of English Architects 1660-1840 in 1954, had he not expanded it to include Scotland and the years 1600-1660 in 1978 (with the title A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840), and brought out a revised edition in 1995.
It is possible for the very well-informed and very diligent to find an error, or even two, in 1,264 double-column pages of 10-point text, but difficult – and unusual. At the time of his death, Howard Colvin had nearly completed proof-reading the fourth version of this astonishing work, whose versions since 1954 have been the starting point of all historical research on the architecture of early modern Britain....