| Biographical Note | Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens OM KCIE RA FRIBA was a British architect and one of the Commission's Principal Architects in France after the First World War.
He was born on 29 March 1869. He started as a pupil in the office of Ernest George in 1887 before setting up his independent practice from 1889 onwards, distinguishing himself mainly for country house work (e.g. Munstead Wood, Orchards, Deanery Gardens, Tigbourne Court, Marshcourt, Heathcote, etc.). In 1909, he was architect for Hampstead Garden Suburb. Lutyens also designed Rand Memorial and Johannesburg Art Gallery (1911). In 1912, he was appointed Architect for New Delhi, later the seat of the Government of India.
In 1918, he designed the temporary War Shrine for Hyde Park and was also knighted.
On 5 March 1918, Lutyens was appointed as one of the Commission’s Principal Architects for France. Like Sir Herbert Baker, Lutyens was invited by Sir Fabian Ware to visit the battlefields on the Western Front in 1917. As Principal Architect, Lutyens supervised the design of 126 cemeteries, including Etaples Military Cemetery, the largest of the Commission’s cemeteries in France. He was also responsible for the Great War Stone (1917) or Stone of Remembrance, a key feature in the Commission’s cemeteries. Lutyens also designed several of the Commission’s Memorials to the Missing, including Arras, Thiepval, Villers-Bretonneux (Australian), Grevillers (New Zealand), Delhi (India), the Freetown Memorial, Sierra Leone and the Mercantile Marine Memorial at Tower Hill, London. Sir Edwin Lutyens’s agreement with the Commission was terminated on 31st December 1930 but he then became Honorary Consulting Architect.
Following on from his work with the Commission, Lutyens designed the Cenotaph at Whitehall as well as War Memorials at Leicester, Northampton, Southampton, Colombo and Dublin. His civic work included Midland Bank Headquarters (London, 1924), the British Embassy (Washington, 1926), Liverpool Cathedral (1930; incomplete).
In 1933, he became Master of the Art Workers’ Guild.
Sir Edwin Lutyens died on 1 January 1944, aged 74. |