Robert Adam

Robert Adam
b. Kirkcaldy, Fife, 1728;
d. London, 1792.

Unquestionably Scotland’s most famous architect and one of the most celebrated of British architects. He formed a fertile repertory of new ideas on a visit to Italy (1754-8), and at his return to London he was determined to become the leader of classical revival in England in architecture and decoration. His ability to select and use motifs from the classical antique in an original way led to his success, and his interior designs are one of the finest expressions of C18 artistic achievement. Adam had decided, whilst still in Italy, to measure the ruins of the Roman emperor Diocletian’s palace at Spalatro. This experience helped him to abstract the essential details of antiquity, and then infuse them with a personal slant composed of many component pieces. Robert was the second surviving son of William Adam (1689-1748). Himself the son of a builder, William had become one of the first strictly classical architects working in Scotland. He owed a little to the two principal architects of the previous generation, Sir William Bruce (c.1630-1710) and James Smith (c.1645-1731), and he used architectural forms as they did, from a wide variety of sources. This gave a “vigorous and sometimes over-dressed character” to the facades of his houses. The same might, unfairly, be said of his son’s interior schemes. The most unusual of the interior wall treatments Robert created were those which were based on Etruscan vase decoration. The Etruscan Dressing Room at Osterley Park, Middlesex (1775-6), is the only substantial survival of at least eight such rooms; its fans, palmettes, painted pedestals, urns, sphinxes and roundels of disporting classical figures make a unique pattern. It breaks with the servitude to antiquity in an original way. Adam decorative schemes are associated with a lavish use of colour. This can be observed not only in the actual settings but in their surviving drawings. Some nine thousand of these survive (Sir John Soane’s Museum, London), and often surprise by their strength and clarity of colour. The Adam style was created by a true eclectic who incorporated lightness, smallness of ornament, colour, and archaeological, Italian, French and Renaissance influences. That it has enjoyed lasting approval is due to the quality of Robert Adam’s directing, if ruthless, mind, which was backed by superb craftsmen and, thanks to his acute business sense, by a family firm to supply all the building materials needed.

List of major buildings / works
Hatchlands, Surrey, 1758-61.
Harewood House, Yorks., 1759-71.
Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, 1760-70.
Osterley Park, Middx, 1761-80.
Syon House, Middx, 1762-9.
Nostell Priory, Yorks., 1766-70.
Newby Hall, Yorks., 1767-80.
Saltram, Devon, 1768-9.
Chandos House, 2 Queen Anne Street, London, 1771.
Royal Society of Arts, London, 1772-4.
20 St James’s Square, London, 1772-4.
20 Portman Square, London, 1775-7.

Bibliography
Robert Adam, The Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia, 1764.
Robert Adam, The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1773-9, 1822.
William Adam, Vitruvius Scoticus, 1810.
John Fleming, Robert Adam and his Circle in Edinburgh and Rome, London, 1962. Geoffrey Beard, The Work of Robert Adam, London, 1978.
John Gifford, William Adam, Edinburgh, 1989. GB

Filed Under A on November 26, 2008

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