been asserted, he had any hand in designing the beautiful colonnade of Burlington House (now lying neglected on the embankment at Battersea), this reputation might stand higher, but there appears to be no sufficient reason for depriving the Earl of Burlington of the full merit of this work. On the other hand, there seems to be no doubt that he was the real designer of Holkham, although the plans were published after Kent's death by his pupil and assistant, Matthew Brettingham, without any mention of Kent [see Brettingham, Matthew, the elder, and Brettingham, Robert Furze}}]. He was a faithful follower of the Palladian style, the principles of which he understood, and his buildings, especially the Horse Guards, have the merit of fine proportion. As a decorator and designer of furniture he was heavy, but not without style.
Other works of Kent which are praised by Walpole are a staircase at Lady Isabella Finch's in Berkeley Square, the ‘Temple of Venus’ at Stowe, and the great room at the Right Hon. Henry Pelham's in Arlington Street. For this statesman he also built a Gothic house at Esher; and other works in the same style were the law courts at Westminster and a choir screen in Gloucester Cathedral; but all these have been demolished. His most important ‘gardens’ were those of Sir Charles Cotterel Dormer and of Carlton House, but they no longer exist. Walpole calls him the ‘father of modern gardening,’ ‘the inventor of an art that realizes painting and improves nature. Mahomet imagined an Elysium, but Kent created many.’ His claim to be the inventor of that more natural style of gardening and planting which was afterwards developed so greatly by ‘Capability’ Brown [see Brown, Lancelot] and others seems to be well founded, although Bridgman, who invented the ‘haha,’ was to some extent his predecessor. The principles Kent followed were those laid down by Pope in his ‘Epistle to the Earl of Burlington,’ and had been illustrated by Pope himself in his famous garden at Twickenham. Mason, in his ‘English Garden,’ speaks of Kent as Pope's ‘bold associate.’ In connection with John Wootton [q. v.] Kent designed some illustrations to Gay's ‘Fables,’ and he executed the vignettes to the large edition of Pope's ‘Works,’ and plates to Spenser's ‘Fairy Queen,’ 1751. All of these are poor, and the last are execrable.
Kent designed the decorations of the chapel-royal at the marriage in 1734 of Princess Anne and the Prince of Orange, and published an engraving of the scene. He also published a print of Wolsey's hall at Hampton Court.
Two pictures by Kent are still exhibited at Hampton Court Palace, ‘The Interview of Henry V and the Princess Katharine’ (784), and the marriage of the same persons (788); and a model by Kent for a palace in Hyde Park is also to be seen there. A portrait of Kent by himself was lent by the Rev. W. V. Harcourt to the Loan Exhibition of Portraits at South Kensington in 1867.
[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting; Redgrave's Dict.; Bryan's Dict. (Graves and Armstrong); Redgraves' Century of Painters; Cunningham's Lives of British Artists, 1831; The English Garden, by W. Mason, Commentary, &c., by W. Burgh, 1783; Fergusson's History of Architecture; Gwilt's Encyclopædia of Architecture; Sarsfield Taylor's Fine Arts in Great Britain and Ireland; Cat. of Loan Exhibition of Portraits at South Kensington, 1867; Biographie Universelle, article ‘Luti, Benoit;’ Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, v. 329, vi. 159; Chalmers's Dict.; Gould's Sketches of Artists; Pye's Patronage of British Art; Seguier's Dict.; Nagler's Künstler-Lexikon; Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. (1891), App. pt. ix. p. 191; Dobson's Hogarth (1891).]
KENT, WILLIAM (1751–1812), captain in the navy, born in 1751, son of Henry Kent of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and of his wife Mary, sister of Vice-admiral John Hunter [q. v.], was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1781, and after continuous service in the Channel and North Sea was appointed in 1795 to the command of the Supply, in which, on 16 Feb., he sailed for New South Wales, in company with his uncle, Captain Hunter, in the Reliance. The ships arrived at Sydney on 7 Sept., and for the next five years Kent was employed in the service of the colony, making several voyages to Norfolk Island and the Cape of Good Hope, and surveying parts of the coast of New South Wales, In October 1800 he sailed for England in command of the Buffalo, and on his arrival was reappointed to her, June 1801, for the return voyage to Sydney, where, in October 1802, he was promoted by the governor, Captain King, to the rank of commander. In the following April he was ordered to go to Norfolk Island with stores, and thence through the islands examining their capabilities as to the supply of cattle and forage. He was afterwards to go to Calcutta and bring back as many cows as possible of the best breed. On 19 May he made the south-west coast of New Caledonia, and discovered a 'beautiful and extensive harbour,' which he named Port St. Vincent, where he remained for several weeks (Kent, Journal, quoted in 'Quarterly Review,' iii. 33). In January 1804 he was at Calcutta (Addit. MS. 1375S, f. 96), and returned to Port
