Poor Sir John Vanbrugh has been in a bit of a slump. Although coachloads of tourists still visit Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard every day, over the last decade he’s been enjoying less visibility than his friend, the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, who acted as his assistant on these two masterpieces of English Baroque architecture. Hawksmoor always insisted that the designs for them were Vanbrugh’s – something taken as read until the 1920s, when Vanbrugh biographer Laurence Whistler opened the debate on who exactly did what.

Sir John Vanbrugh, Perspective view of Castle Howard, c. 1699-1706, pencil, pen and ink and wash © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

It is an unanswerable question. However, in the 1970s, the architectural historian Kerry Downes felt able to hint that Hawksmoor – a superb draughtsman who trained under Sir Christopher Wren – was the real power behind the throne. In 1981, Vanbrugh’s currency rose once more – when Castle Howard became the backdrop to TV’s Brideshead Revisited – but it was not long before the never-ending whodunnit resumed. In recent times, Vanbrugh’s reputation hasn’t been helped by Ian Sinclair and Peter Ackryod, who have done a skilful PR job on Hawksmoor by recasting him, thrillingly, as ‘the devil’s architect’.

However, hope is at hand. March 2026 marks the tercentenary of Vanbrugh’s death (of a ‘quinsey in the throat’), and the Georgian Group has come to the rescue with a yearlong festival of his work which takes in most of his houses – including the ones designed without Hawksmoor’s input. This exhibition (curated by Sir Charles Saumarez Smith CBE and architect Roz Barr) is part of the Vanbrugh300 celebrations and accompanies a new biography of Vanbrugh, by Saumarez Smith: the first in almost 50 years.

Sir John Soane’s Museum is a fitting venue – not least because Soane revered Vanbrugh, calling him ‘the Shakespeare of architects’. There are two rooms to explore, plus a short film in another part of the house, and the exhibition starts as it means to go on – by striking a blow against the prevailing theory. ‘This exhibition shows how Vanbrugh created his bold Baroque style for buildings through his design drawings,’ says the introductory panel. ‘In the past, he is thought to have been dependent on his assistant, Nicholas Hawksmoor … However, Vanbrugh’s own surviving drawings reveal skill, a keen eye for detail and a tendency for the dramatic in architectural designs’.

Presiding over Room 1 is the famous ‘Kit-Cat’ portrait of Vanbrugh, made around 1705 by Godfrey Kneller, showing him sitting in a velvet jacket with one hand on his hip and the other holding a pair of architect’s dividers. Beneath the impressive wig he is grave and pensive, but part of Kneller’s brilliance is that he captures Vanbrugh as a young poser: a man pretending to be grand and not quite getting away with it.

Aside from this piece (on loan from the National Portrait Gallery), most of the exhibits in this room are technical drawings from the V&A, skilfully supplemented by some large architectural studies which Soane had made of Vanbrugh’s work to accompany his Royal Academy lectures. In fact, Soane’s images are a welcome foil to the more familiar views from Vitruvius Britannicus. In one, he depicts the roofline of Blenheim Palace in silhouette – surely one of the most stirring views in Britain – and, in another, we have a rare view of the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket (built by Vanbrugh in 1705, destroyed by fire in 1789).

While Room 1 does a nice job of setting the scene, it’s Room 2 where Vanbrugh comes to life, for here, amongst his own drawings, we get a glimpse of the man at work. Many are casual pen studies, dashed off – metaphorically speaking – on the back of a napkin, perhaps to show a client. Oddly enough, it’s Vanbrugh’s obsession with chimneys that emerges most strongly – and not just in his design for the chimney arcade at Kings Weston. Several of his sketches show smoke curling from chimneys – a curious detail which led Downes to conclude that Vanbrugh’s drawings were unskilled; childlike, even. Yet, as Vanbrugh’s letters show, he worked hard to dispel the myth that his houses were draughty, and one wonders if these belching chimneys were meant to express a sense of cosiness.

Soane office, Royal Academy Lecture Drawing of the work of Sir John Vanbrugh, `Goose-Pie House’, London – Whitehall, perspective, SM 7544, Courtesy of the John Soane Museum

Admittedly, next to Hawksmoor’s precise drawings, Vanbrugh’s do look rushed. But then, again, he was rushed – one of his extraordinary qualities was his ability to juggle multiple projects as he careered across Britain in his carriage (his driving was apparently ‘none of the slowest’). Elsewhere, we see Vanbrugh’s more domestic, playful side. His plan and elevation for his own house in Whitehall – dubbed ‘Goose Pie House’ after a poem by Jonathan Swift – can be seen here, along with a beautiful image of it by Soane’s office. There are also some fascinating drawings of Vanbrugh Castle and its surrounding buildings in Greenwich, where he settled later in life. As the caption explains, Vanbrugh built a miniature ‘castellum’ on a hill for himself along with ‘a series of houses for his family’. Only Vanbrugh Castle survives today, but this little fiefdom is captured in miniature here – seeing it reminded me of Castle Howard, with its extensive grounds and Medieval curtain wall.

If you’re visiting the exhibition, don’t miss the short film located behind the statue of Apollo on the far side of the breakfast room. It follows the architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi on a trip to Blenheim Palace. Their impressions of the building range from amusing (‘It’s like your mother’s house,’ says Denise, improbably) to profound reflections on the development of English architecture. ‘I cannot help looking on this building with the tenderness of a sort of child of my own,’ Vanbrugh wrote of Blenheim; I should think he’d be delighted to find it portrayed so beautifully.

Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture is available to view from 4 March until 28 June.