Augustus Charles Pugin

Augustus Charles Pugin (1762 to 1832) was a French-born British artist, architectural draughtsman and writer, born in Paris to a Swiss father. He left France around 1798, during the French Revolutionary Wars, studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London and worked as an architectural draughtsman for the architect John Nash before settling on a career as a commercial artist for publishers of illustrated books. He made views and plates for works such as Ackermann's Microcosm of London and Specimens of Gothic Architecture, ran a drawing school in Bloomsbury whose students included several architects, and helped design the Diorama building in Regent's Park in 1823. His interest in the Gothic was magnified in the career of his son Augustus Welby Pugin, the leading advocate of Gothicism in nineteenth-century England.