Understanding the Adam family
Jeremy Musson applauds a scholarly volume of essays that looks afresh at many aspects of the Adam brothers’ oeuvre
Architecture Robert Adam and his Brothers Edited by Colin Thom (Historic England, £60)
THE story of the Adam brothers—and the role of Robert, in particular, as the great impresario of British architecture in the 1760s and 1770s—is a rich and complex one. The publication of new research by a number of top scholars in the field will help architects and general enthusiasts alike to approach it with fresh understanding. This book, subtitled New light on Britain’s architectural family, links a number of important strands and makes for compelling reading.
The richly illustrated volume is based on papers from The Georgian Group’s 2015 symposium. It is introduced by a highly readable essay by Colin Thom, which sets Robert’s dynamic personality and career in the context of key relationships with elder brother John and younger brother James.
It covers his time in Italy, his method of working and his original stylistic solutions, as well as the challenges of the brothers’ business speculations, such as the glorious, if ill-fated, Adelphi— as Mr Thom says, ‘an urge to speculate ran high in the Adam blood’.
For the first chapter, Alistair Rowan offers an engaging assessment of the often-overlooked architecture of the eldest brother, John, who remained in Scotland.
What is clear is that there are many different ways in which to explore Robert’s architecture and interiors. There is the practical: Conor Lucey’s exacting study of the eating parlour at Headfort House, Ireland, vividly illustrates his interior-decoration projects and ‘design by correspondence’.
There is also the commercial: Jonathan Yarker’s chapter reveals Robert and James’s astute involvement in the antiquities market in Rome and Mr Thom contributes a fresh assessment of Robert’s speculative work in Portland Place and the significance of the commercial as a driver for the aesthetic enterprise of design.
Then there is the intellectual. Adriano Aymonino’s sharply drawn study of Robert’s use of Classical sources for the iconography of two small rooms at Kedleston and Syon (where the architect forged his bold, new style) illustrates his ability to ‘offer a radically new experience of the antique based on a manifold principle of quotation from architectural, sculptural, decorative and ornamental Roman prototypes’.
However, in his architecture, and especially his interiors, there is also something inescapably sensory—even emotional. Miranda Hausberg’s lively chapter offers a fresh exploration of the illusionistic and scenographic quality of his interiors and shows how he used ‘the techniques of the theatre to make them and the language of the theatre to describe them’.
The book closes with Eileen Harris’s fascinating study of the Adam Revival in the US, from the late 19th century onwards. Who would not have enjoyed cocktails in the sophisticated Adam Revival sitting room designed by Horace Trumbauer for railway millionaire George Jay Gould I, on Fifth Avenue in New York? The room was, we read, ‘a relief from the overpowering French atmosphere of the principal reception rooms’.
This extract reminds us that Adam taste held its place then— as it does now—among the historic ‘greats’. It remains the only style to be named after a specific designer (or family of designers). Jeremy Musson is the author of ‘Robert Adam: Country House Design, Decoration & the Art of Elegance’ (Rizzoli, 2017)
Especially in Adam’s interiors, there is something inescapably sensory