Metiendo Vivendium (By Measure We Live), A Tribute to Sir Edwin Lutyens O.M. by Carl Laubin (b.1947), 4ft 11in by 8ft 6in, Collection: Sir Terry Farrell
Terry Farrell says: In painting, a capriccio usually means an architectural fantasy—the placing together of buildings of a master’s life works, for example. Here, Carl Laubin has assembled those of Sir Edwin Lutyens. The painting, which I own, is printed for wider distribution to raise funds for the Lutyens Trust. I delight in the fact that it shows two masters at the same time. Laubin’s monumental research and detailed painting of the buildings is quite exquisite and his assemblage of them in a fantasy landscape is brilliantly done. At the same time, of course, it shows the complete works of one of England’s and the world’s greatest architects.
Sir Terry Farrell is an architect and urban designer best known for his Postmodernist works, such as the London Headquarters of MI6 and TV-am and the extension to Charing Cross station.
John McEwen comments on Metiendo Vivendium: Carl Laubin is the foremost contemporary exponent of the capriccio or architectural fantasy, here an assembly of Lutyens’s principal buildings. He was born in new York, but took british citizenship in 2000. His father, like his grandfather, was a professional oboist and oboe maker, and persuaded him to be an architect as a more reliable profession than painting. ‘It took me 20 years to end up where I had always wanted to be, but it was a sound decision of my father’s because architecture did provide me with a unique path into painting.’
Chance brought him to England in 1973 and it was while working for Jeremy Dixon that he was encouraged to make his first architectural paintings. Since 1986, he has painted full-time. Mr Laubin also paints landscapes and the occasional portrait.
His Lutyens tribute includes 150 buildings and memorials. Most prominent is the centrally placed Liverpool Cathedral. Spanning the horizon to its left is Viceroy’s House, new Delhi, and dominating the more distant horizon to the right are Lindisfarne Castle and, to its lower left, Castle Drogo, Devon. in the left foreground is a collection of war memorials, including Thiepval to the Missing of the Somme. The Cenotaph is in the cityscape immediately above.
Further information about the painting can be found on www.carllaubin.com/projects/lutyens, including how to order a printed reproduction, with half the proceeds donated to the Lutyens Trust. in October, Mr Laubin has an exhibition of new capricci at Plus One Gallery, Pimlico, London SW1.
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