Description: One of the most individual and inventive exponents of the English Palladian style in the generation which followed that of Lord Burlington and William Kent, James Paine (1717-89) was a leading pioneer of the Palladian villa as a country-house form and an early designer of Rococo interior decoration. His lively elevational style, exemplified particularly in the Midlands and North of England where much of his work was done, developed from early experiments with facade-width giant pediments such as that at Serlby Hall to striking compositions of a triple-pedimented form, as at Stockeld Park and Bywell Hall; but by the time he designed the magnificent circular staircase at Wardour Castle public taste had passed to Robert Adam. Paine's career epitomises the change in the role of the professional architect which took place during the mid-eighteenth century, from confinement largely to official circles and a narrow grouping of traditional patrons to the status of an independent figure in private practice in Paine's case with a wide variety of clients ranging from leading members of the Whig aristocracy to northern coal-owners and new men of commerce. He was one of the first to take articled apprentices under the title of 'architect'; and he emerges as a confident pioneer of a new professionalism, a figure prophetic of the standing and responsibilities of the architect in eras to come.

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