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[edit] A different opinion
- "But Blacket was not a great architect. The mistaken belief that he was both the Wren and the Pugin of Australia, a genius who produced great architecture, arose from the transference of his attributes to his works. He was essentially an archaeological Gothicist, a self-taught architect unable to transcend an antiquarian outlook that handicapped his whole career. His Gothic buildings are assemblages of details culled from copy-books and, as might have been expected, his classical designs follow safe eighteenth-century prescriptions rather than the dangerous freedom of nineteenth-century Romantic Classicism. For the most part Blacket's work lacks invention and imaginative insight: it is too careful and uncommitted."
H. G. Woffenden, 'Blacket, Edmund Thomas (1817 - 1883)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 3, Melbourne University Press, 1969, pp 173-175. [1] cites Woffenden, Architecture in Australia 1840-1900 (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sydney, 1967)
Comment
This critique of Blacket's work, written in the 1960's, is dangerously POV, yet constitutes the summing up of his career in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. While the statement "essentially an archaeological Gothicist" is correct, the value judgements made here are very dated, prejudiced by an attitude, typical in Australia in the 1960s, that anything that wasn't obviously innovative, wasn't worth having.
Blacket is a Gothic innovator, but he was indeed steeped in historic styles, and his innovations are those that a medieval or Renaissance architect might have made. And which might very easily miss the eye of this particular writer. It is quite true that he does not display "the dangerous freedom of ... Romantic Classicism. To say his work is careful and "uncommitted" is ludicrous. "Committed" sums up Blacket's work precisely. Amandajm 08:59, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
