CONTEXT 185 : SEPTEMBER 2025 59 Sensory experience The Royal Pavilion Brighton: a Regency palace of colour and sensation Alexandra Loske, Yale University Press, 2025, 272 pages, 270 colour illustrations, hardback, ISBN 978 0 300266 66 5, £35 The transformation of Henry Holland’s Regency classical Marine Pavilion into John Nash’s extraordinary composition of Indian domes and minarets, with flamboyant chinoiserie interiors by Crace, is a familiar story. It has never been told in such detail or with such plentiful and sumptuous visual support as in this volume, illustrated entirely in colour, including wonderfully vivid photographs of interior details, as well as architectural drawings and designs for decorative motifs. The volume is beautifully designed: the binding reproduces a Chinese wallpaper recently reinstated in Queen Victoria’s bedroom, and the illustrations include Repton’s unexecuted proposals from his Red Book, with each of his views shown with and without his overlays; and 40 drawings and watercolours by AC Pugin, reproduced from the pavilion’s archive in their entirety for the first time. These formed the basis for Nash’s book of coloured aquatints, published in 1826, which show the pavilion in its most complete form, before Queen Victoria (who never liked the building) removed carpets, furniture, fireplaces and objets d’art to decorate the new east wing at Buckingham Palace, before selling the pavilion to Brighton Council in 1850. Although Queen Victoria and later Queen Mary, returned some elements of the interiors, many remain at the palace. In 2019, over 130 objects, mostly mounted Chinese porcelains, were lent to Brighton for a temporary exhibition. Some of the photographs in the present volume show these items in place in the pavilion, although they have since been sent back to London. The book covers the history of the pavilion from many points of view – not only the architectural development of the building, and the character and role of its patron George IV, but also the part played by George’s mother Queen Charlotte, whose chinoiserie rooms at Windsor and Buckingham House predate Brighton. The book quotes from the views of contemporary visitors, which were mainly rapturous (an exception was the Princess Lieven, who found ‘something effeminate in it which is disgusting’). It makes only brief reference to the links with Romantic literature, citing the intriguing parallel with the ‘stately pleasure dome’ described in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. The core of this book is its highly detailed examination of the pavilion’s interior decoration in all its varied elements: wallpapers, carpets, painted glass laylights, palm-tree columns, lotus flower light fittings and chandeliers adorned with dragons, down to small details such as the imitation scallop shells lining the dome of the Music Room, and the gilded wooden bells and tassels hanging along its cornice. Extensive use is made of archive material, such as account books and ledgers, although the narrative would have been improved if some of these references had been relegated to the endnotes. Sources for the decoration are analysed, including copies of motifs from Chinese silks in a Crace sketchbook in the Brighton archives, and drawings by the artist William Alexander, who accompanied an official embassy to China in the 1790s. The author gives an expansive account of the achievements of Robert Jones, who is first mentioned in the Crace ledgers but later emerged as a significant independent decorative artist: she is not the first to draw attention to him but boldly describes him as ‘the pavilion’s artistic genius.’ The unique contribution of this book is its insight into the role of colour, the author’s specialist field. She gives us a ‘sensual colour walk’ through the pavilion. Using her knowledge of early 19th century colour theory and its application to interior decoration, she demonstrates how colour was employed to create harmony, balance and unity within rooms, and to make contrasts between rooms, building up colour intensity and variety to reach a climax in the two largest and most spectacular interiors, the Banqueting Room and the Music Room. She also stresses the importance of lighting, mirrors and surface finishes, including gilding, and also silvering which, applied on its own, or in combination with colour, provides surfaces that reflect the light, bringing variety and sparkle and, after dark, multiplying the flickering light of candles and oil chandeliers. Given the author’s emphasis on the multilayered sensory experience of visitors – she writes of music, perfumes and ‘a cacophony of voices, the tinkling of crystals and ornaments on chandeliers and pagodas, the clatter of the serving of food and drink’ – it is surprising that the Great Kitchen is mentioned only in passing. The Kitchen, with its technologically advanced equipment, and the adjacent rooms where elaborate pastries and confectionery were prepared, are spaces crucial for the basic functioning of the pavilion. Their absence from the book is a major fault. She also makes only very brief references to the repairs,
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