Richard Boyle was a celebrated peer often known as 'the Architect Earl'.
Born in 1694, his interest in architecture was shaped over several Grand Tours, providing him with a refined taste in arts and architectural design. His professional skills as an architect were extraordinary for an English aristocrat, and his works were supported by a mason contractor.
One of Burlington’s first architectural projects was his own London residence, Burlington House, where he collaborated with the architect Colen Campbell and his good friend and protégé William Kent. Initially a painter, it was through his patronage and relationship with Burlington that Kent branched out into interior design, soon becoming a fashionable architect in his own right and eventually one of the pioneers of the English landscape garden.
After Kent, Lord Burlington’s closest friend was the poet Alexander Pope. The pair had grown up together and shared views on architecture and gardening. Several works by Pope are dedicated to Lord Burlington; his epistle to Lord Burlington was to eventually form one of his four ‘Moral Essays.’ After he moved to Twickenham, Pope would visit Chiswick House, another home and architectural development of Burlington, again worked on by both Campbell and Kent, amongst others.
In a letter written to the Earl in 1742, Pope expressed: ‘I assure you, Chiswick has been to me the finest thing the glorious sun has shin’d upon.’
After a fire destroyed Burlington’s Jacobean Mansion at Chiswick and its new Palladian front in 1725, a separate villa was built to replace it. The villa at Chiswick stands as a Neo-Palladian building with a dome, built perhaps as an example of a contemporary British architectural masterpiece. A novel and new building style at the time, through Burlington, this style of architecture and interior design was firmly established, adopted, and used in many public buildings throughout England.
Boyle married Dorothy Savile, and together they had three daughters, all of whom died young. Their youngest, Charlotte Boyle, was the last to survive, dying a year after her father in 1754. She married the 4th Duke of Devonshire and was heir to the Burlington inheritance and properties, which included Bolton Abbey, Lismore and Chiswick. On her passing, the properties passed into the Devonshire family.
The inheritance included much of Burlington’s collection of works, now carefully preserved within the Devonshire Collections. It was Burlington's ambition to collect as many architectural drawings by both Andrea Palladios and Inigo Jones as he could acquire. This great collection is now divided between the Royal Institute of British Architects in London and Chatsworth. In addition, Burlington acquired c.500 designs by Jones for court masques, scenery, and costumes, which remain at Chatsworth as the largest collection of Inigo Jones court drawings. A selection of these works are on display at Chatsworth throughout 2026.
Burlington died at Chiswick House in 1753 and was buried at Londesborough.
Main image: Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork by Jonathan Richardson, oil on canvas, circa 1717-1719 NPG 4818 © National Portrait Gallery, London
Above: Chiswick House in London
