Beautiful Britain: Brighton Royal Pavilion

 Yes, I returned to Brighton for yesterday's beautiful Britain drawing. This completely mad piece of architectural exuberance is one of my favourite 'just for the hell of it' buildings.

Of course, some of its appeal lies in the fact that it was built for the Prince Regent, later King George IV. I've always found him a fascinating character, an opinion that was reinforced when I studied his life in some detail as a Mastermind subject. George was somewhat taken with Brighton when he visited one of his royal uncles, Henry Duke of Cumberland, there. His first Brighton home was a rented former farmhouse, which he had the architect Henry Holland rebuild into the Marine Pavilion. This was a far more conventional, classical structure than the Royal Pavilion. It proved to be a home conveniently far away enough from London for the Prince to be able to enjoy playing house with his illegal wife, Maria Fitzherbert.

The Prince assumed the regency in 1811, when his father George III, poor man, was incapacitated by the dementia which would afflict him for the rest of his life. In 1815 he engaged architect John Nash to remodel the Pavilion into its current form. It took a good 7 years. 

William IV, George's brother and successor, would stay in the Pavilion in fairly regular visits during his reign. His own successor, their niece Victoria, really didn't care for the place at all. The Pavilion was sold to Brighton, which helped pay for Osborne House, the royal family's new summer house. 

When I'd finished this one it was crying out for watercolour, and I applied washes of four colours. The bending of yellow, purple and blue in the sky above the main dome for once wasn't a clumsy accident, but a deliberate choice to let it happen and see what effect we could get.