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CYRIL FAREY

ARCHITECT AND DRAUGHTSMAN

 

FAREY AND EDWARDS, ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING
IDEAL HOME ANNUAL 1948/9

 

 

Cyril Arthur Farey (1888-1954) Awarded the Travelling Student Scholarship by the Architectural Association in 1909, Farey returned with watercolour drawings of huge professionalism which attracted the attention of British Architects seeking a stylistic dressing for their competition designs.

In 1921 he was off on the Edward Stott Travelling Scholarship after which, in 1922 he began a long working collaboration with Sir Edwin Lutyens with drawings for New Delhi and Castel Drogo of particular distinction.

Myerscough-Walker wrote in 1958, ' "The success of Farey lay in his ability to work on very detailed and large-scale drawings and yet retain (or regain) the original freshness of the white whatman paper upon which he worked ... No-one could compete with him in his ability to handle this very difficult medium ... in Farey's work you have the epitome of the school of drawing which stems from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris ... Farey inherited this tradition and he was unique in England in spite of his imitators.  No architect could draw as well as this perspectivist and I doubt whether his equal will be seen again in this country' (see G.Stamp, The Great Perspectivists, London, 1982, p. 131).

The best testiment to his extaordinary skill, control of techniques, and overall atmospherics of urban spaces, was an exhibition mounted by the Gallery Lingard in 1990.

His spaces, weather (often with damp foregrounds) and even figure scatterings created a unique territory referred to during his lifetime as 'Fareyland'.

I am constantly tempted to collage the lot into a great big steaming city through which I can prowl.

 

 

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