Anachronistic Drawings
The Professor’s Dream, Charles Robert Cockerell, is a 6 ft x 5 ft synopsis of architectural history. 100 buildings composed within four terraces. Each building is drawn at the same scale, and the entire piece is rendered in watercolour. As a capriccio it is the symposium of ancient and modern times; old temple buildings mixed with the domes of the cathedrals of Florence, St Peter’s and St Paul’s.
In Charles Robert Cockerell, Architect in Time Reflections around Anachronistic Drawings Dr Anne Bordeleau asks “Was Cockerell’s dream truly that of a historicist?” Bordeleau puts forward the content within the drawing was created to better comprehend the content in which the drawing was created. Suggesting it is not only historic but the history of the world. (Bordeleau, 2014)
The Professor’s Dream is an idiosyncratic landscape, an amalgam of legendary and fictional echoes and laments.
Reference
Bordeleau, Dr A. (2014). Charles Robert Cockerell, Architect in Time Reflections around Anachronistic Drawings. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
The Professor’s Dream, Charles Robert Cockerell (1848).
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