Brompton Oratory I

The London Oratory’s Italianate interior was intended by way of homage to St. Philip Neri, who, in the sixteenth century, founded the Oratory in Rome. A range of materials, including baroque sculptures, were rescued, and imported from a demolished church in Italy to be incorporated into Herbert Gribble’s architectural scheme. Based on Euclidean geometry, and thus suggestive of order, stability and permanence, the overall prospect is enlivened by near-life-size, stone figures that face into the nave. These figures, somewhat elevated, – as standing on plinths, – and each flanked by tall pillars, appear the more dignified for being but few in number, and so, appearing at widely spaced intervals around the nave’s perimeter.

In the period when Caughlin worked from this subject, he was also working on twentieth-century urban scenes; paintings which, in their own way, explore the relationship of figure to setting.

Ian Caughlin (b.1948), 2024