Tatham, Charles Heathcote
- Dictionary and Archive of Travellers
- Title
- Tatham, Charles Heathcote
- Full Text of Entry
-
(1772 - 1842), architect; clerk to S.P. Cockerell c.1788; draughtsman to Henry Holland c.1790 - ; published Etchings representing the best examples of Ancient Ornamental Architecture [1799] and Etchings representing Fragments of Antique Grecian and Roman Architectural Ornament [1806]; Master of Holy Trinity Hosp., Greenwich, 1837 - 42.
1794 - 6 [dep. Portsmouth 26 Apr. 1794] Leghorn (21 Jun. 1794), Siena, Rome (Jul. 1794 - late Oct. 1795), Naples (9 Nov.), Rome (winter 1795 - Jul. 1796), Ravenna, Venice (c.13 Jul.), Vicenza (four days), Venice (25 Jul.), Trieste (by 1 Aug) [Vienna by.7 Aug.]
Tatham was the second of Henry Holland's assistants to be sent to Rome (the first being Christopher Ebdon in 1774). He was given an allowance of £60 per annum and allowed to spend considerably more on fragments or casts of antiquity.1 His eventful voyage by sea to Italy is described in the entry for his travelling companion, J.M. Gandy.
Upon arrival at Rome Tatham took lodgings in the Via Babuino in the house of a retired sculptor, Giocchino Falcioni (once occupied by Fuseli and Alexander Nasmyth).2 He began executing Holland's business immediately, by making contact with Thomas Jenkins and he found that prices varied from about £10 for a small antique fragment to £200 for an antique statue. Throughout the autumn of 1794 and spring of 1795 he collected what fragments he could for Holland, although French academicians dismissed from Rome (as hostilities threatened) had carried away an 'immense quantity'. Tatham was also having casts made, and shipping his acquisitions back to England.
His circle of acquaintance included the brother of the Italian expatriate architect Giuseppe Bonomi and the Abbate Carlo Bonomi, whilst Henry Holland's brother John introduced him to Prince Augustus. He met Cornelia Knight and heard Mrs Billington sing in the Palazzo Chigi. Among artists Tatham knew Alexander Day, Richard Westmacott and Angelica Kauffman (whose silhouette he drew in March 17963). He claimed he was 'particularly acquainted' with Canova, but his closest friend was the young architect Mario Asprucci (who was to design Ickworth for Lord Bristol), with whom he exchanged portraits by Vicenzo Camuccini. Pompeo Batoni's daughters were his laundrymaids. Tatham passed the summer of 1795 studying in the Vatican museums and making once-weekly excursions in the vicinity of Rome. With the assistance of Canova, he was able to obtain some antique fragments from Piranesi's collection, and he entered into negotiation for frieze and cornice fragments with Prince Borghese.4 In October 1795 Tatham told his patron that although there was little else worth buying in Rome, he had been assured of the quality of the collection he had built up, and several eminent individuals had suggested that publication of it would be worthwhile (a task he was later to undertake).
Meanwhile his architectural education was not neglected. At a dinner in late 1794 with the 4th Earl of Bristol (and his young Irish architect Francis Sandys), Tatham received his first independent commission, for designs for Lord Bristol's house at Ickworth. These drawings cost him fourteen days of effort and several months of frustration. By February 1795 Lord Bristol had lost interest in Tatham, who described his patron as capricious and drunk, but by June the plans were once again under serious consideration. By that time, although Tatham had made several other designs (an elevation of a round house for John Holland's friend, George Hankin, and a temple dedicated to Kauffman), his ambition remained modest and he wished for nothing more than a reliable surveyorship.
Tatham was, however, interested in acquiring academic credentials and he tried for honorary memberships of Italian academies. On 29 March 1795 he was elected Accademico d'Onore of the Accademia Clementina, to whom he sent a drawing of a sculpture gallery as a sign of gratitude.6 This election was to prove advantageous, for in March 1796 Holland wrote to Tatham explaining how membership of one of four Italian academies (Rome, Florence, Parma or Bologna) was a qualification for admission to the British 'Architects' Club', of which Holland had been a founder-member in 1791.7 Tatham was finally received as an honorary academician at the Accademia di S. Luca in Rome in May 1797, after Bonomi's assurance that he was already a member of the London 'Society of Architects' (presumably the Architects' Club).8 Meanwhile Tatham continued with his professional studies: in the autumn of 1795 he had examined a number of roof trusses over major religious and secular spaces in Rome,9 a campaign undertaken jointly with the Spanish architect Isidoro Velasquez with whom he also reported measuring antiquities, and in April 1796 he had discussed the use of cementitious materials found at Naples.
Tatham had arrived at Naples on 9 November 1795. At Velletri he had gained entry to Cardinal Borgia's museum of Egyptian antiquities, and at Naples Sir William Hamilton arranged for him to visit the local sites. Earlier in the year Tatham had said that an architect need only spend a short time in Naples, but it clearly appealed to him. He had good lodgings with a view of Vesuvius, and he admired the 'mahogany' complexion of the Neapolitans. He visited Pompeii and Herculaneum and was immensely impressed with Paestum. He stayed ten days in the apartment of Philipp Hackert at Caserta, and witnessed a performance of Emma Hamilton's 'attitudes'. It was at Naples that he first came into contact with the interior decorative work of J.H.W. Tischbein.
Returning to Rome, Tatham was struck by the emptiness of the city. His only serious competitor as a collector was the 4th Earl of Bristol, and his major worry was the difficulty of shipping cases back to England - one having already been confiscated at sea by the French. By April 1796 he estimated his collection at 250 pieces, but by May, with the French army occupying Piacenza, it was no longer even possible to insure merchandise. Jenkins had offered to look after Tatham's collection for him, but Canova arranged for eight packed cases to be placed under the protection of the Venetian ambassador at Rome and looked after by the Venetian sculptor Antonio d'Este. The French had already started confiscating English property at Leghorn and the Commissioners had arrived in Rome to remove, so Tatham reported, 100 statues and 500 codices from the Vatican. In Tatham's view, the city was enduring a sacking, and had become a Babylon. It was the political situation and financial insecurity which deterred him from purchasing two paintings by Claude shortly before his departure from Rome, offered to him in desperation for 5,000 scudi by Prince Altieri, whose son had personally conducted him through the family palace.(10)
Tatham left Rome on 9 July 1796. The war made his long-intended visit to Florence impossible, causing a regret which 'exceeds all bounds', and he travelled directly to Venice in three days and nights, narrowly avoiding the French at Ravenna. Within two days of his arrival at Venice, Tatham made a four-day excursion to Vicenza, where he was especially impressed by Palladio's Basilica, Teatro Olimpico and Villa Rotunda, the 'chef d'oeuvre' of modern architecture, surpassing even the expectations which Chiswick Villa had aroused in him. 'Tartan Inglese Architeto' returned to Venice on 25 July.(11) In Venice he was presented to the Doge by one of his architects, but his stay must have been brief, for by about 1 August he had reached Trieste, whence he continued to Vienna, arriving about 7 August.
1. See Tatham letters MSS. C. Proudfoot and D. Watkin, CL, 13/20 Apr. 1972, 918 - 19, 8 Jun. 1972, 1481 - 6. Autobiog. fragment (priv. coll.). 2. AVR sa, S.Maria del Popolo, 1794 - 6. 3. Kauffman 1924, f.p.183. 4. For Tatham and Canova, see H. Honour, Burl.Mag., 104[1972]:147. 5. H. Honour, Apollo, 78[1963]:373. 6. S. Zamboni, Atti e Memorie della R.Accademia Clementina di Bologna, 13[1978]:71. 7. See Salmon 1990, 199 - 214. 8. ANSL 55, ff.36, 37v, 45v. 9. See F. Salmon in D. Yeomans, The Architect and the Carpenter, 35 - 7. 10. Whitley, 2:225 - 6. 11. ASV is 778.
F. S.