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SYON HOUSE. BOBEET Adam, Abchitbct, 1762. 
 The ascent from, the Sail to the Ante-Boord. 
 
ROYAL. SOCIETY OF ARTS 
 
 JOHN STREET, ADELPHI. LONDON. W.C. 2. 
 
 CANTOR LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 The Architecture and Decoration of 
 Robert Adam and Sir John Soane,R.A. 
 
 (1758-1837). 
 
 WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 ARTHUR T. BOLTON, F.S.A., F.R.LB.A. 
 
 Sonne Medallist and R.I.B.A. Essay Medal, 1893. Curator of Sir John Soan^s Museum. 
 
 Delivered before the Royal Society of Arts on May 3rd, loth, and 17th, IQ20. 
 
 ' PRICE, 2». 6rf. 
 
 LONDON:' ,s 
 
 PRINTED BY WM. CLOWES & SONS, LTD., DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E. i. 
 
 1920. 
 
1 ct yl 
 
 SYLLABUS, 
 
 LEOTUBB I. 
 
 The first lecture deals with the general position in English architecture at the time of Robert 
 Adam's return from Italy in 1758, and describes the revolution of taste that he brought about. The 
 leading ideas of his scheme of architecture and decoration, now known as the Adam style, are fully 
 discussed. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 The second lecture continues the subject in greater detail through a selection from the most 
 characteristic works by Robert Adam, dealing more particularly with the interiors and decoration 
 of his famous houses. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 The ttird lecture is devoted to Sir John Soane, and traces his relations to the movement begun 
 by Robert Adam and to the Greek and Mediaeval revivals. Soane's ideas on aichitectuie and 
 decoration are discussed in relation to his more important works. In conclusion, it is pointed out 
 that three-quarters of a century is covered by the work of Robert Adam and John Soane. 
 
The Architecture and Decoration of 
 Robert Adam and Sir John Soane, R.A. 
 
 (1758-1837). 
 
 LECTURE I. — Delivered May jrd, jq20. 
 
 Cameo Pobtrait of Egbert Adam, Architect. (1728-1792. 
 Modelled by'Tassie and produced by Wedgwood. 
 
 ^""HE opening date of the period which has 
 A 'been taken as the subject of these Cantor 
 Lectures is that of Robert Adam's return from 
 his memorable grand tour, which extended from 
 the summer of 1754 to January, 1758. 
 
 The closing date is that of the death 
 (January 20th, 1837) of Sir John Soane, who 
 
 was born in 1753 and came 
 to London in 1768, the year 
 of the launching of the 
 famous Adelphi enterprise. 
 
 Any such selection of 
 dates is, of course, purely 
 arbitrary as one period 
 blends into another, the 
 seed of any change of style 
 has long been germinating, 
 and while all can mark the 
 new growth when it has 
 shot up, few can detect 
 the transitional stages of 
 its development. Prom the 
 time of the introduction of 
 pure Italian architecture 
 into England by Inigo 
 Jones, in the reigns of 
 James and Charles I., a 
 tolerably regular line of 
 development had been pur- 
 sued, in spite of the gap 
 caused by the CivU War. 
 
 The work of that great 
 architect was the object of 
 the enthusiastic regard of 
 the school of Burlington and 
 Kent. James Gibbs, the im- 
 mediate leader before Robert 
 Adam, had died in 1754. He 
 was very fairly characterised 
 by Walpole, who said that 
 " Gibbs' merit was fidelity 
 to rule, his defect a want of 
 grace." 
 
 The work, therefore, of 
 the period of the two first Georges had 
 been a solid and consistent whole, which it 
 now became the mission of Robert Adam, 
 as a revolutionary artist, to break up and 
 transform. The opening of a new reign in 
 1760 was of itself a favouring circumstance, 
 and in ten years from that date imitation of 
 
Adam work had become general. The com- 
 mencement of the long ministry of Lord North 
 (1770-1-782) marked the close of -the troubled 
 period of the transition from the Early to the 
 Late Georgian, and the year 1775, that of the 
 mid-point of Robert Adam's career in London 
 (1758-1792), coincides vfith the high-water mark 
 of that epoch of prosperity and magnificence. 
 Everybody knows how the American and other 
 wars clouded over the fair prospects. In 1780 
 occurred the Gordon Riots, in 1782 the Ministry 
 collapsed, and a real recovery was only com- 
 mencing when the death of Robert Adam took 
 place (March, 1792), almost simultaneously with 
 that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 In 1793 the Revolutionary Wars began which 
 were almost continuous up to 1815. By the 
 time that peace was re-established after Waterloo 
 a new generation had sprung up, to whom 
 Robert Adam was merely g, name, almost a 
 legend, and one grown so distorted that in the 
 current view the Adams had been little better 
 than speculative builders. 
 
 Adam work was freely destroyed for the next 
 half century during the ascendancy of the Greek 
 and Gothic Revivals, and it has been the work 
 of this generation to re-establish its fame. 
 
 There is a closer link than is generally sup- 
 posed between- the work of Soane and Adam. 
 By reason of his parked personality and long 
 life, Sir John Soane came to be respected and 
 even venerated as the veteran heir of the age 
 before the great wars of the Revolution. 
 
 As gold medallist of the Royal Academy 
 (1776) he had been introduced to George III. 
 by Sir William Chambers himself. He was the 
 pupil of George Dance, R.A., and ha;d been an 
 assistant in the office of Henry Holland, jun., 
 and could claim to have been the friend of 
 Robert Adam, James Stuart, and James Wyatt, 
 who had been the leaders of that remarkable 
 epoch. 
 
 Soane as an artist, moreover, was an outcome 
 of Robert Adam's revolutionary mission, belong- 
 ing more to the^ Adam and Dance group than 
 to the more orthodox school of Chambers, 
 Taylor, and Paine. 
 
 The fundamental idea of Robert Adam that 
 lay at the root of his revolution was the thesis 
 " that the domestic architecture of the Greeks 
 and Romans was entirely distinct from that of 
 their temples." This proposition, which may, 
 perhaps, be regarded as merely a commonplace 
 to-day, called in question the validity of the 
 system of the orders which had been the sub j ect of 
 so much study since men had first turned to the 
 
 remains of Roman antiquity as a new basis for 
 building, in the earliest days of the Renaissance. 
 
 PaUadio had, systematised the use of the 
 orders, and the universal admiration for his 
 building achievements at Vicenza and Venice 
 had carried his style throughout Europe. His 
 " Architettura " (1570) had been Inigo Jones's 
 handbook in Italy, and the Anglo-Palladian 
 School was fortified by more than a century of 
 successful practice in England. 
 
 Robert Adam's, earliest work, after his return 
 in 1758 from Italy, is leavened by this tradition, 
 and there has always been a body of opposition 
 to his revolutionary theories and their applica- 
 tion in architecture. 
 
 Soane accepted Adam's basis, but modified it 
 by the adoption of those Greek ideas and 
 details against which Sir WUliam Chambers 
 had thundered in vain. The Bank of England, 
 to which Soane had been appointed architect in 
 1788, was the field in which from 1794 onwards 
 this later revolution of Soane's was manifested. 
 The opposition was intense; the feelings of the 
 remnant of the old school were outraged by the 
 young architect's substitjitionof such unorthodox 
 work, in place of the sound tradition of the 
 school of St. Martin's-in-the-Eields. 
 
 After the great war the older school was 
 practically extinct. The Greek and Gothic 
 revivals were in possession of the field, until, in 
 the last years of Soane's life, a new chapter was 
 commence^ by the introduction of the Florentine 
 and Roman, Astylar manner, introduced by Sir 
 Charles Barty, R.A. Sir John Soane, R.A., who 
 had started under the influence of Robert Adam, 
 showed in his last work, the new State Paper 
 Office (1829-33), an evident appreciation of tins 
 fresh departure. 
 
 As aU are aware, Robert Adam was the- 
 second of four sons of William Adam, sen., an 
 architect of large practice in Scotland up to the 
 time of his death in 1748. John, the eldest of 
 these sons, passed his life in Edinburgh and on 
 his estate at Blair Adam. Robert, the second 
 son, born in 1728, was educated from the 
 age of fifteen at Edinburgh University. James, 
 the third son, born 1730 (?) was also entered 
 there,'but under the Greek in place of the Latin 
 professor. Of WHliam, the youngest of the 
 group, very little is known ; he seems to have 
 been the business agent of the London pra'ctiee 
 of Robert and James. As the survivor of the 
 group,living until 1822, he deserves reniembrance 
 because it is through his care that the priceless 
 collection of Adam drawings in the Soane 
 Museum has survived. 
 
Syon House. The Hall. 
 
As was stated at the outset Robert returned 
 from his- memorable grand tour of nearly four 
 years' duration in January, 1758, and the re- 
 mainder of his life was passed in London, 
 varied by repeated journeys to Scotland and 
 over all England, in connection with his 
 extensive practice as an architect. 
 
 James may be regarded as having been chief 
 of the staff to Robert, while John's position 
 seems to have been that of the eldest brother, 
 to whom a certain deference was shown, as by 
 the inclusion of his name in the contracts, etc., 
 of the Adam Brothers. 
 
 There is nothing to show that, apart from 
 the genius of Robert, any one of the other three 
 sonsof William Adam, sen., would have achieved 
 anything rar.kiag above the sound and tra- 
 ditional, it heavy and duU, work of their father. 
 
 As is well known James made an extended 
 tour from 1760 to 1763 in the early days of 
 Robert's commencing practice in London. He 
 collected pictures, antiques, books and drawings 
 abroad, and directed various studies by draughts- 
 men and others, as though intending some 
 important work. The architectural results of 
 his tour were, however, unimportant in com- 
 parison with that of Robert's earlier tour. 
 
 At the same time too much importance has 
 been attached to Robert Adam's highly success- 
 ful book of 1764 on Diocletian's Palace at 
 Spalato, which he had studied on the spot 
 in 1757. The value of this study was that it 
 enlarged his idea of ancient domestic archi- 
 tecture, and confirmed the view that he had 
 already taken as to the essential difference 
 between the temple architecture of the 
 Greeks and Romans and that of their private 
 houses. The allegation that the Adam style 
 derives from this late Roman work on the 
 coast of the Adriatic is a pure myth, as 
 anyone who looks at the book with attention 
 will soon discover. Robert Adam's studies 
 abroad were pursued in a ve^y catholic spirit, 
 and the work of the Early Renaissance, of the 
 Romanesque, and even the Mediseval ages, was 
 not without its effect upon his mind. 
 
 As the son of an architect and one who had 
 already certainly taken part in actual work, 
 Robert set out on his grand tour with an excep- 
 tional equipment, and on his return he had 
 the ability, knowledge, and fortune, that enabled 
 him to undertake at the outset of his career 
 in London, work of very considerable import- 
 ance. He seems, therefore, to have escaped the 
 long and trying period of unemployment that is 
 the usual fate of the beginner in architecture. ' 
 
 Before dealing in some detail with a selection 
 from the innumerable works of the Brothers 
 Adam, from 1758 to the close of the century, it 
 wiU be as well to consider the character and 
 direction of the movement initiated by Robert, 
 because it will be evident that the Adam 
 revolution in style was not merely one of 
 internal architecture and decoration. 
 
 No such separation is, in fact, possible, and 
 it was soon evident that his attack on the 
 validity of the order system in use internally 
 could not fail to lessen its importance extern- 
 ally as well. Broadly speaking, the mission of 
 Adam was a recall to the principle that in any 
 treatment of the surface of a building, whether 
 external or internal, the value of the relative 
 planes may be a primary consideration. As 
 applied to street architecture in particular, this 
 is a principle of the greatest value, and it is not 
 limited to any one phase of architectural style. 
 The Adelphi, in its pristine condition, showed 
 a masterly consideration of the problem of low 
 rehef ; the rigid plainness of the background was 
 a necessary condition of the successful distri- 
 bution of the ornament in vertical pilaster 
 strips. There was a balance of effect, which has 
 been upset by the subsequent application of 
 details, uncalled for, and destructive of the 
 original breadth of effect. 
 
 Robert Adam very soon treated the orders 
 with the same freedom externally as he had 
 claimed internally. He asserts that the architect 
 possessed of any degree of mastery can, and 
 should, vary the received proportions arid 
 features of the orders. He thus freed himself 
 of the hampering effect of deep entablatures, 
 composed of the full architrave, frieze," and 
 cornice, as strictly regulated by the width and 
 height of the pilaster or column. 
 
 By decorating a plain faced architrave he 
 dispensed with the frieze, and regulated the 
 depth of his cornice by a consideration of its 
 relative value to the tall and wide spaced 
 column, or pilaster, which lent itseU to his con- 
 ception of degance and decorative effect for 
 domestic buildings. In this way he evolved 
 the fa9ade of an Adam character, which has 
 become a recognised feature of our London 
 streets. He accepted gladly the London stock 
 brick and, whether in stone or stucco, he gave 
 a note of contrasted effect by a sparing but 
 always judicious use of classically derived 
 features. 
 
 In a general consideration of the Orders he 
 admits only three — Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian 
 — and he sees that they are each of them repre- 
 
sentative of a different expression. Proceeding 
 further he discriminates against the current 
 Early Georgian use of the Corinthian with 
 unfluted shafts, arguing with much subtlety 
 that there are relative degrees of enrichment to 
 be observed, and, therefore, where this could 
 not be afforded, a 
 simpler order must 
 be adopted. 
 
 Contrary to the 
 general opinion 
 Robert Adam had 
 a special feeling 
 for the Doric order, 
 which he used in 
 his earliest days 
 with remarkable 
 success. The 
 mausoleum a t 
 Bowood,.as well as 
 the Admiralty 
 screen, may be cited 
 as masterpieces of 
 this application. 
 Similar success at- 
 tended his employ- 
 ment of the Doric 
 in the various halls 
 of his houses from 
 Syon onwards; and, 
 in his latest great 
 work, the Edin- 
 burgh University, 
 the great entrance 
 is a magnificent ex- 
 ample of the same 
 style on a grander 
 
 Rotunda, which are commonly regarded as of 
 a date subsequent to Palladio's death. The 
 Villa Maser, where BurKngton acquired Pal- 
 ladio's drawings, was frescoed by Paolo 
 Veronese, and the stucco work , was by that 
 architect's favourite stuccatore, Vittoria. Here, 
 
 It is a curious 
 fact that whereas 
 that pillar of ortho- 
 doxy. Sir William 
 Chambers, R. A., 
 was mainly respouT 
 sible for the Chinese 
 mania, having at 
 Kew Gardens prac- 
 tised an eclecticism of the wildest character, 
 Robert Adam, on the other hand, recalled the 
 taste of his age to the veritable antique. 
 
 Current domestic work, when he arrived on 
 the scene, was split into three main currents — 
 Italian, French, and Chinese. The Italian, 
 through Burlington and Kent, had acquired a 
 late Venetian character, work of the type that 
 ■ may be seen in the decorations of the Villa 
 
 Syon House. Detail in Hall. ' 
 
 and. in the church adjoining, the character of 
 the decoration is semi-barroque, such as in fact 
 appears to have been intended by Wren himself 
 in St. Paul's, if the well-known engraving of 
 the interior section of the Cathedral is reliable 
 evidence. 
 
 French work had only recently been fully 
 exemplified in the interiors of Chesterfield 
 House (1749), where the gilded rococo salons 
 
lO 
 
 still remain, as evidence of the Earl's thesis 
 that a house should be Italian outside and 
 French within. 
 
 The Chinese School had the fuU approval of 
 Chippendale, and work like Clandon Park, Surrey, 
 shows the style that was fashionable in the 
 earliest years of Robert Adam's commencing 
 practice. 
 
 To the Italian votaries Adam proposed a 
 return to a strict following of antiquity, as it 
 was to be seen in the cryptw, or excavated 
 chambers of the remains of Imperial Rome, 
 and in the newly revealed houses and remains 
 of Pompeii and Herculaneum. 
 
 The current French work he desired to reform 
 altogether. He set out to abolish " the absurd 
 French compositions of this kind (interior 
 decorations and fittings) hitherto so servilely 
 imitated by the upholsterers of this country" 
 (England). 
 
 Sir John Soane, in his lectures to the students 
 of the Royal Academy, some twenty-five years 
 after Robert Adam's death, asserts that the 
 interlaced C scrolls, and other features of current 
 French taste, were in actual fact for the time 
 being driven out by Adam's reformation of the 
 taste of his day. 
 
 The Chinese mode Adam left entirely on one 
 side, the only concession being that, in such 
 early work as that for the Queen of the " Blue 
 Stockings," Mrs. Montagu, in Hill Street, 1766, 
 he uses some Chinese pagoda -like details in the 
 regularly disposed panels of the ceiling. 
 
 Adam at first had considerable difiioulties in 
 bringing his executants to relinquish the well- 
 established class of detail to which they had 
 grown accustomed. Even in the execution of 
 designs as late in date as 1774, as for instance 
 the pfano for the Empress Catherine, he has 
 occasion to complain that the person who 
 executed the work had departed from his 
 design. 
 
 Some of the early mirror frames at Osterley 
 can be seen to be much superior in design to 
 their execution, and it was only where he had 
 fuU control that the whole of the interior, 
 furniture, hangings, etc., of his houses are 
 completely true to his ideal. 
 
 The stages of Robert Adam's development are 
 quite sufficiently marked out. Shardeloes, in 
 Buckinghamshire, is as characteristic of the 
 earliest stage as Home House in Portman 
 Square is of the latest. 
 
 The actual first work, some interiors at Hatch- 
 lands, near Guildford, for Admiral Boscawen 
 (1759-60), are clearly the student work of the 
 
 young architect, on his first return from the 
 rich storehouse of Italy. A much more serious 
 note is struck at Syon, where the length of 
 time over which the work extended enabled 
 Adam to develop his ideas from the early style 
 of the haU and dining-room to the later phase 
 of the drawing-room and gallery. ^ 
 
 At Kedleston the Adam scheme was hampered 
 by the pre-existing and partly executed design 
 of Brettingham and James Paine. Some of the 
 work there is closely allied to Shardeloes and 
 Syon, but a variety of difficulties prevented 
 the full development of Robert Adam's ideas, 
 in spite of the mass of alternative drawings, that 
 he had made. The Oreat South Front, which 
 w^s to be an example of his principle of " move- 
 ment," remains as a fragment, a noble centre, 
 devoid of the wings and quadrant connections, 
 which were essential to its full effect. , 
 
 This idea of " movement " is really a recog- 
 nition by Robert Adam of the principle that 
 lay behind the work of the later Romaii^ school 
 of Bernini and Borromini. The Italian Barroque 
 had been a revolt against the over-sys^ematisa- 
 tion of the orders, and was a claim to treat 
 buildings as a sculptural unit that could be 
 shaped at will, as an affair of relative masses, 
 dependent on light and shade for an effect 
 which might even become merely pictorial. 
 
 Unfortunately this late Italian claim for 
 freedom was pushed to a license, which revelled 
 in a mere inversion of recognised details, rather 
 suggestive of a certain poverty of original 
 invention. It has hardly been recognised that 
 Robert Adam had ever given attention to the 
 work of the late Roman school. The facts have 
 been established by an analysis of his library, 
 which proves that he had collected a choice 
 selection of books on the subject. 
 
 Evidently Robert Adam did not agree that 
 the architects of this school were the " block- 
 heads " of the famous letter from Sir WilUam 
 Chambers to his pupil Stevens at Rome. Of 
 this epistle Chambers characteristically gave an 
 identical copy to young Soane, upon his setting 
 out in 1778 upon his grand tour. 
 
 We have, therefore, without doubt, the ex- 
 planation why Robert Adam was the earliest to 
 appreciate the real merits of his predecessor. 
 Sir John Vanburgh, to whose genius he paid a 
 discriminating tribute, years in advance of that 
 by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which has been so 
 often quoted. 
 
 Adam had very early in his career added to 
 ■houses by Vanburgh, as at Compton Vemey 
 and Kimbolton, he had certaLoly seen both 
 
1 1 
 
 Syon House. The Ante-Eoom, 
 
12 
 
 Blenheim and Castle Howard, and thoroughly- 
 understood both the ^merits and defects of the 
 earlier master. 
 
 Unforttmately, Robert Adam by the con- 
 ditions and circumstances of his day never 
 achieved that grand building, which was always 
 in his dreams, and constituted the goal of his 
 ambition. 
 
 At first he hoped lor a royal palace for the 
 new King, or at least for new Houses of 
 Parliament, which would also involve new Law 
 Courts. The Adelphi itseK was really projected 
 as an example of a great work, worthy of 
 comparison with the vestigia Eomanoium. A 
 derelict and apparently useless sloping site 
 was to be transformed by vast underworks 
 raising it to the level of the Strand, where a fine 
 terrace of houses was to demonstrate the possi- 
 bilities of London improvements. Quays and 
 warehouses below at the river level were to 
 give a Commercial backing to artistic enterprise, 
 and this busy scene Eobert Adam, no doubt, saw 
 in his mind's eye as a foreground, recalling the 
 quays below the Imperial ruin 'of Spalatro. 
 
 Only at the close of his life did the new 
 University of Edinburgh afEord him an oppor- 
 tunity of displaying his power of conceiving a 
 great building as a whole, and of designing it in 
 a style of broad simplicity, which surprises those 
 who have merely considered him as,^ an oma- 
 mentaUst. 
 
 The Register House of Scotland, a much 
 simpler problem, shows that Robert Adam 
 could bujld with a simplicity and refinement 
 that is truly Grecian. Robert Adam as an 
 architect, in fact, demonstrates the truth that 
 there is no real divorce between the extreme 
 qualities of architecture. He seems by instinct 
 to • have adopted the same alternative as Sir 
 Charles Barry in the case of the Houses of 
 Parliament, either absolute simplicity as in the 
 elevations of the inner courtyards, or extreme 
 elaboration as in the exterior fagades of the new 
 Palace of Westminster. The architectural 
 quality demanded in both cases springs from 
 the same root, a fine sense of unity in the design 
 of the whole, by which the mass is never sacri- 
 ficed to the detail. 
 
 The subordination in Robert Adam's finest 
 work is complete, and extends to every detail, 
 all of which are so fused in the total effect -that 
 nothing is extraneous to the design. 
 
 In his early interiors Adam was hampered by 
 the enthusiasm of the period for the statues of 
 antiquity. The recovery of the Greek master- 
 pieces, through the copies of the Roman School 
 
 of Antiquity, was one of the great interests of 
 the day. 
 
 Niches were required for the Venusfes, Floras, 
 Dianas, Jupiters, and ApoUos of the old 
 Pantheon. The early Adam hall, dining room, 
 staircase, and even the gallery, became the 
 scene of such displays. At Syon there are three 
 great statues on either side of the mantelpiece. 
 Bas-reliefs, where originals were not forth- 
 coming, are given in chiaroscuro paintings. 
 Adam soon realised the unsuitableness 
 of this scheme of decoration for an English 
 interior, and, while he considered thaf the 
 dining room in particular should be in stucco, 
 so that a " smell of the victuals " might not 
 hang about that apartment, he turned to other 
 and more characteristic forms of decoration. 
 
 For the ceiling of these rooms an oval band, 
 supported by wreaths of vine leaves, and 
 enclosing crossed lines of the Bacchic thyrsus, 
 is an early and constantly recurring motive. 
 The band is later on interrupted and strengthened 
 by tablets, presenting miniature bas-reliefs of 
 classical composition. 
 
 The walls divided out into large panels above 
 a chair rail are either filled with stucco ara- 
 besques, or left as a field for inserted portraits, 
 or decorative landscape compositions, most 
 often introducing ruins, antique or castellated. 
 
 Ruins and the elements of picturesque decay 
 had a singular fascination for an age and society 
 which, perhaps, had a subconscious feeling that 
 it was itself drifting towards the Niagara Falls 
 of the Great Revolution. 
 
 Robert Adam's ruin compositions have, how- 
 ever, another purport in that they are essays 
 in design, quite as much as recollections of the 
 past impressions of his days of travel. During 
 the slack period, following upon the American, 
 French, and Spanish wars, he made a number 
 of these compositions ; there are some forty 
 in the Soane Collection alone. They can be 
 divided into two main groups— those which 
 derive their romance from the ruins of anti- 
 quity, and others which recall his early days in 
 the Highlands. In the latter group massive 
 castles crown craggy heights above lakes, or 
 rushing streams of water, crossed by long low 
 arches of masonry. Robert was dreaming of ; 
 rotundas masked as circular dungeon towers, 
 whose buttresses should be linked together by 
 a chain of arches, forming a ring of powerfully 
 shadowed recesses. This revived feudalism was 
 not to be extended to the interiors. 
 
 Culzean Castle, in Ayrshire, while castellated 
 externally, is pure Adam classic within. His 
 
13 
 
 Syon House. Detail in 'Antb-Eoom, 
 
14 
 
 ,anticipatory mediaBvaljsm, where not a conces- 
 sion to the desires of his clients, was, in fact, 
 due to a prepossession orhis own that a broken 
 craggy site was a reason for a design of a castle- 
 like character. Possibly, if his travels had 
 extended to the homeland of Greek architecture, 
 he would have received a different impression 
 from the relation of the temples to their moun- 
 tain scenery and sites. The landscape school 
 of gardening, originated as much by Kent as 
 by any one person, was still in fuU possession 
 of the field. Robert Adam seems never to have 
 fully thought out the true relation of site and 
 buildings. When he touches on that subject 
 he seems to imply that buildings can be spread 
 out, so as to rise up naturally out of the ground, 
 a feat which even Blenheim cannot be said to 
 have achieved. , An Adam house in the country 
 is apt to present the appearance of an isolated 
 cube of masonry, seen under the most favour- 
 able circumstances at the end of a vista of trees. 
 Terraces, forecourts, and garden walls had been 
 proscribed by the destructive followers of Kent, 
 and no real school of gardening existed to 
 maintain the sound tradition derived from the 
 gardens of Italy. 
 
 The primary object, however, of these com- 
 positions by Robert Adam was most likely that 
 of affording ideas for the decoration of wall 
 panels in interiors. He objected strongly to 
 the vast pictorial compositions of the later 
 Italian School, and their followers. Giulio 
 Romano, in the Palazzo del Te at Mantua, had 
 abused the Raphaelesque fresco as a means of 
 interior decoration by an absurd attempt to 
 obliterate the walls themselves, which pre- 
 sumably he had set out to decorate. 
 
 Vast canvases, in Adam's opinion, whether 
 on the walls or ceilings, were a mistake. They 
 trespassed on the field of architecture, and 
 destroyed the scale as well as the necessary 
 detail of the interior they purported to 
 embelljsh. At Syon, in the drawing room, 
 Adam endeavoured to restrict the painter to 
 small flying figures, occupying the field of the 
 octagons and circles of the great cove, as well 
 as of the flat of the ceiling. Undoubtedly, in 
 this instance, the figures are too small, and 
 hereafter Adam provides medallions and 
 lunettes, or oblongs and squares, as panels 
 forming an essential feature of his intricate 
 cefling designs. In these spaces there is room 
 for three or more figures, and the simpler 
 classic myths are recalled by these graceful 
 compositions. 
 
 Constantly these panels are shown in colour 
 
 sketches on the detail drawings^ of ceilings and 
 walls. A great variel^ of ^artists must have 
 been engaged on works ofthis character, which 
 so often now are merely ascribed to Zucohi and 
 Angelica Kaufimann. Hamilton is particulariy 
 mentioned by Soane as preferred to the elder 
 Smirke, R.A., who seems to have been occasion- 
 ally employed by James Wyatt. The chief 
 artist for the latter architect, however, was 
 Biagio Rebecca. 
 
 SUk" as a substitute for the costly tapestry 
 was often employed for the drawing rooms, 
 either in plaiii colours, or woven in patterns as 
 at Syon, where the wall covering is said to be the ' 
 earliest of the SpitalfieldS silk damasks. 
 
 Tapestry is seen in all its glory at Newby. 
 There were four famous sets by Boucher and 
 Neilson. The others were at Croome, Arlington 
 Street, and Osterley. 
 
 The drawing-rooms at Newby and Osterley 
 are glorious pieces of colour. Every detail has 
 been successfully combined by Adam in the 
 general efiect of the whole. He had already in 
 the great room at Kenwood experimented in 
 the direction of subduing by flat washes of 
 colour the glare of a purely white ceiling orna- 
 mented in stucco. This was a very different 
 method fr6m the tiresome " picking-out " of 
 parts in colour and gold, which followed in the 
 early part of the next century. As used by 
 Robert Adam this colour treatment is essen- 
 tially a wash, intended to blend the effect of the 
 whole, and not to isolate particular ornaments, 
 or lines of mouldings. 
 
 Given tapestry or figured sUks on the walls, 
 woven pattern fabrics on the furniture, finely 
 embroidei-ed clothes, and' a carpet reflecting^ 
 the elaborate design of the ceiliiig, all with 
 details and tones of pure, bright, and strong 
 colour, it is elementary that a fuU accord 
 would require the extension of colour to the 
 ceiling itself. 
 
 The typical Adam interior of the- period 
 1770-80 stands in a striking contrast to that 
 of the antecedent age of the first two Georges, 
 in respect of every detail that contributes to 
 the total effect of the taste of the age. Pattern 
 design, whether in form or colour, reached a 
 high level, and fragments of the style have 
 persisted, and reappear in common use, to the 
 present day. 
 
 It is natural to inquire how far the develop- 
 ment of Robert Adam's idea of interior treat- 
 ment was modified in the course of his practice,. 
 It is possible to recognise three stages, the first 
 in which the ornamentation, while classic in 
 
15 
 
 comparison with French rococo, is yet more 
 florid and scroll-like than the work of the true 
 Adam character. The main period is that in 
 V. which architectural lines and classic tjrpes are 
 \ fully observed. In the third stage a tendency 
 to relax this severity of form may be detected, 
 and there is an occasional use of flowers, which 
 border on a merely naturalistic treatment. 
 
 Probably Robert Adam found it difficult to 
 resist the pressure of common opinion, which 
 fails to recognise the limits of the direct appli- 
 cation of natural forms. Very few are aware of 
 the long course of evolutionary change, which 
 has shaped the well-established forms of classic 
 mouldings and enrichments. The attempt to 
 supplement these by direct transcripts from 
 natural objects has very rarely been successful 
 or permanent. It seems clear that Robert him- 
 self was content with the alphabet of the art of 
 decoration, and that such attempts as those 
 of the " Britannique order," the " Scotch 
 capital," etc., are merely due to James Adam's 
 vague imaginings. There was a good deal of 
 the amateur in the composition of the third 
 member of the Adam group. 
 
 Contemporary critics, who talked about the 
 superior chasteness of James Wyatt's use of the 
 antique, failed to see that Robert Adam had 
 the better sense of the all-important distribu- 
 tion and spacing of . ornament. His combina- 
 tions pf lines, and special gift of pattern-making, 
 saved him from a variety of false effects, which 
 are to be seen in the work of his rival "Wyatt 
 and of his colleague James Stuart. 
 
 The colour decoration of Wyatt is also 
 inferior, because it is so often based upon an 
 imitation of the least attractive phase of the 
 Raphaelesque. It may be said that while 
 Adam might have been taught by Raphael 
 himself, Wyatt had sat at the feet of Giulio 
 Romano. The Cupola Room at Heaton Hall 
 shows the hot tjrpe of colour that Wyatt 
 favoured. Robert Adam's most original contri- 
 bution to colour effects was, perhaps, the com- 
 bination, which he labelled as " Etruscan 
 Decoration." 
 
 In an age which demanded the sanction of 
 antiquity for any fresh departure, such a label 
 had obvious advantages. Adam puts forward 
 an array of authors, but he is careful to explain 
 that not much is to be gathered from them on 
 this subject of " Etruscan Decoration." The 
 real idea at the back of his essay was a sense 
 of the values of earth colours, bright and duU 
 reds, yellows, grey blues, chocolate browns and 
 black. Horace Walpole talks of being plunged 
 
 into a " chilly bathos " by the Etruscan Room at 
 Osterley. The simplicity of the scheme startles 
 him. He does not understand this reliance on 
 the earliest principles of decoration, those by 
 which a few of the simplest colours are disposed 
 in direct contrast of hue. 
 
 So much of this interesting colour work has 
 been obliterated by later fashion that very few 
 examples exist in sufficient completeness. The 
 Etruscan scheme was applied throughout walls, 
 ceilings, hangings, carpets, and furniture. 
 ' Occasionally the mantelpiece of white marble 
 inlaid with composition is all that remains to 
 show the original character of the colour scheme 
 of the " Etruscan Room." 
 
 The general knowledge of ahtiquity, its 
 literature, legends, and myths, as well as the 
 common forms of their expression in ancient 
 art, amongst the class for whom Robert Adam 
 chiefly worked, was a valuable background for 
 his achievements. As a source of expression 
 the original fables were current coin. The 
 choice, of Hercules, or of Paris, the 
 continence of Scipio, the sacrifice of Iphi- 
 genia, and the rest of the typical myths needed 
 neither label nor explanation. To-day many of 
 the Adam bas-reliefs and subjects of decoration 
 have become merely a riddle to the spectator 
 who misses the application that suggested their 
 particular use. This power of applying imiversal 
 symbols, for the expression of particular qualities, 
 was of great assistance in the use of sculptural 
 decoration. Abused by dulness it degenerated 
 into an impossible conglomeration of tiresome 
 allegorical figures, such as the great war soon 
 after piled up under Academical auspices in the 
 Abbey and St. Paul's. 
 
 It is worthy of note that where Robert Adam 
 used pairs of life-sized figures in his earliest and 
 favourite form of chimney-piece, he seems to 
 give them no special characteristics. Their 
 aspect is purely decorative and unhampered by 
 any forced significance. The same seems true of 
 the Syon Bridge design, where the three female 
 figures have no greater characterisation than that 
 of a group of the three Graces. This avoidance 
 of an overcharged expression in sculpture is a 
 lesson of the greatest value. 
 
 These lectures are not the place in which to 
 deal with the architectural qualities of Robert 
 Adam's plarming. All that need be said here is 
 that as house-builder he has had few equals. 
 Numbers of his houses remain practically un- 
 altered, and their continued occupation for more 
 than four generations testifies in a remarkable 
 way to their merits. 
 
1 6 
 
 It should be pointed out, however, that in 
 sectional treatment Robert Adam never resorts 
 for effect to the experimentalism of George 
 Dance and John Soane. There is no hint of 
 eccentricity in his classic schemes, which remain 
 true to the antique ideal of simplioity and repose. 
 Adam taught and practised the necessity of 
 variety, in contradistinction to the dulness of 
 that series of oblong and square interiors, which 
 had prevailed in the earlier Georgian times. 
 He points out the value of the progressive 
 
 effect ending in a cliinax, but he arrives at such 
 a result without apparent effort, or any straining 
 after a cowp-de-theatre, in the manner of a 
 Jesuit church, or late JRoman Renaissance 
 interior. This Grecian moderation is all 
 the more remarkable because Adam was the 
 earliest to appreciate the real merits of his 
 predecessor, Sir John Vanburgh, and, as we 
 have seen, he had a knowledge of the 
 ItaKan barroque, and had been a close ally 
 of Piranesi. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Uk., 
 
 Adam Drawing. Console Table an]>- Ceiling. 
 
17 
 
 View- op ipE Eoyal Terrace of the Adblphi. 
 Initiated by Messrs. Adams in 1768, and began to be occupied 1772. 
 
 LECTURE II. — Delivered May ioth, ig20. 
 
 I PROPOSE to deal in this second lecture 
 with a brief selection of some of the principal 
 Adam houses, more particularly with reference 
 to their interiors, in a sequence of dates. 
 
 It is impossible to do more than merely 
 outline a few of the principal points in each 
 case, and I can only refer you to the two folio 
 volumes, now in the press, in which I hope to 
 give a full and adequate survey of the vast 
 subject of the work of that gifted and versatile 
 artist, Robert Adam. 
 
 Hatchlands. — ^At Hatchlands, near Guildford, 
 in Surrey, in a very duU house, reminiscent of the 
 old Admiralty, without, however, any portico, 
 Robert Adam made his first essay in interior 
 decoration following upon his return from his 
 grand tour in January, 1758. 
 
 Ripley, the carpenter, who was the architect 
 of the Admiralty in 1724-6, was probably that 
 of Hatchlands as well. He died February 10th, 
 1758, less than a month after Robert's return. 
 
 As Admiral Bosoawen (1711-1761), the hero 
 of the capture of Louisburg (1758), returned in 
 November of that year and sailed again on April 
 
 14th, 1759, the date of the Adam drawings can 
 best be placed quite early in the latter year. 
 
 The Admiral's monument in Cornwall states 
 that he had just finished the work at his death, 
 January' 10th, 1761, and less than two years 
 would be little enough time for the execution of 
 the Adam work at Hatchlands. Robert's share 
 must'be confined to the completion of some of the 
 chief rooms. Naturally the work is unrestrained 
 in design and seems bursting with all the enthu- 
 siasm of a recent return from Italy. The actual 
 work is better than the drawings, and the design 
 evidently underwent a process of revision in 
 execution, though one less chastened than would 
 have been the case after even a brief experience 
 on the designer's part of actual work. 
 
 The centre room of the chief front, the present 
 Great Drawing Room, is the interior with which 
 the principal Adam drawings that remain are 
 concerned. The ceiling- is centred on an oval, 
 enclosed by the strong lines of a prolonged 
 octagon, with an outer border enlivened by 
 sea horses in relief. The concentration of orna- 
 ment in the corners is an Italian feature. , The 
 
i8 
 
 walls are simply framed up into panels, which in 
 Adam's drawing are fiUed in with arabesques in 
 stucco, of the typeof those which exist at Sharde- 
 loes. Two paintings of ruins are shown in the 
 centre panels, with a subject-piece enclosed in 
 the overmantel frame. The fine white marble 
 mantelpiece displays a pair of tall graceful 
 figures, a composition which was Bobert Adam's 
 earliest ideal. The adjoining Library has even 
 more character. The scheme of the ceiling , 
 seems to have a personal reference to the hero's 
 career. The set-out is a radiating scheme of 
 panels with an effect rather resembling that of 
 the gussets of an octagonal dome. The four main 
 figures in these spaces are Neptune, Justice, 
 Fame, and Victory, the last being a figure with a 
 laurel wreath and palm branch. The alternating 
 panels are filled in with twin mermaids rising 
 from a base of cannons, rifles, anchors, flags, 
 swords, spears, and even drums, a mass of 
 decorative symbolism dear to the heart of the 
 eighteenth century. The whole design has 
 evidently a monumental significance and sym- 
 bolic intent. 
 
 The mantelpiece in white marble, of which the 
 drawing exists, is interesting as an early example 
 when Adam was disposed to follow massive 
 architectural types. 
 
 There was a great salon upstairs which no 
 longer exists. The ceiling was based on a 
 great oval, the band of which was filled in with 
 octagonal coffering. 
 
 The abiding interest at Hatchlands will always 
 be that of possessing the earliest decorative 
 essay of Robert Adam after his return from 
 Italy. 
 
 Shardeloes. — Shardeloes, near Amersham, in 
 Buckinghamshire, may be regarded as the first 
 house, though here also some building work 
 was already in hand, before Adam came on the 
 scene. 
 
 The interiors of this house illustrate the claim, 
 made by Robert Adam in his preface to the 
 "Works" of 1773-8, to have effected a revolu- 
 tion in the taste of the age : 
 
 " In the decoration of the inside, an almost 
 total change, the massive entablature, the pon- 
 derous compartment ceiling, the tabernacle 
 frame, almost the only species of ornament 
 formerly known in this country, are now univer- 
 sally exploded, and in th^ir place weha ve adopted 
 a beautiful variety of light mouldings, gracefully 
 formed, delicately enriched,- and arranged with 
 propriety and skill. We have introduced a 
 gteat diversity of ceilings, friezes and decorated 
 pilasters, and have added grace and beauty 
 
 to the whole, by a mixture of grotesque stucco 
 and painted ornaments, together with the flowing 
 rainceau, with its fanciful figures and winding 
 foliage." 
 
 Shardeloes represents, of course, the origina- 
 tion rather than the full accomplishment of 
 these ideas. As an early work it has a strong hold 
 on what had gone before, with all the fresh 
 interest added of the germinating stage of a 
 new manner. 
 
 In the interiors we see the heavier and bolder 
 ornainentation of the beginner, who has not yet 
 shaken himself free of the earlier Georgian style. 
 The wild curves and scrolls of leafage, in this 
 preliminary essay at Shardelofes, as also in the 
 first Adam designs executed at Kedlestpn, 
 had yet to be subdued and harmonised into a 
 new system of low relief decoration of a classical 
 and restrained architectural character. 
 
 The wall decorations of the Dining Room are 
 perhaps the most symptomatic achievement at 
 Shardeloes, work which seems to call for less of 
 the taming process than the ceilings throughout 
 the house, which very probably were the first 
 work executed. In these wall panels the sphinxes 
 and the inserted bas-reliefs, which were to form 
 the central motifs of his system, already appear 
 and strike the true Adam note. The finish and 
 delicacy of the later work are indicated rather 
 than achieved at Shardeloes. 
 
 The house interiors remain here seemingly the 
 same and untouched. The wall colourings are 
 now faded to pleasant tones of green, lilac, and 
 grey, while the ceilings are mostly white. 
 
 The doors, double owing to the thickness of 
 the walls, are magnificent specimens of mahog- 
 any, aged to the colour of a tawny port wine, 
 and dulled in polish to a delightful surface. 
 
 The Salon, entered from the great portico 
 in the centre of the east front, is a stately hall 
 in that form of Doric, which Adam afterwards 
 developed so effectively at Lansdowne, Hare- 
 wood, and many another of his gr^at houses. 
 
 The Dining Room at the northern end of the 
 east front is a fine interior, richly decorated. 
 The ceiling has a large oval band crossed by very 
 free-flowing foliage^ like a chain of wreaths. 
 The crossed thyrsi and the ivy in the centre 
 are an obvious reference t6 Bacchic rites. As a 
 whole this design suffers from heterogeneous 
 effect of elements insufficiently welded together. 
 Adam, more than once, using the same idea, 
 hereafter effected great improvements on this 
 early composition. 
 
 The Drawing Room, in cream colour, contrasts 
 with the faded blue of the Salon. Relief is 
 
19 
 
 Syon House. Fieeplaoe in Dining-Eoom, 
 
20 
 
 afforded by two fiae mirror frames in gold on 
 gilded console-tables with quadrant tops of scagl- 
 iola. The ceiling presents a central circle with 
 four lions' heads linked- together by bold swags. 
 Four fans are introduced, features which Adam 
 afterwards developed with great effect. Here 
 again the somewhat wild scrolling on the ceiling 
 illustrates the early date of the work. 
 
 The Library, occupying the centre of the 
 south front is perhaps as characteristic as any 
 of these interiors. It may be regarded as the 
 first of those rooms, dedicated to books, of which 
 he produced so fine a series. The distribution 
 of the south window-wall takes the form of a 
 shallow arcade,_the bookcases being worked in 
 as projections on the piers. The other walls 
 are entirely lined for two-thirds of their height 
 with white painted deal casings framing up wire 
 panel doors, behind which the books are visible. 
 The entrance doorways to the room are brought 
 into the scheme, so that the line of the book 
 casing^ is preserved throughout. Above are a 
 series of panels fiUed in chiaroscuro paintings 
 on green grounds, Mke a Wedgwood cameo relief 
 on a large scale. The fine mantelpiece is of 
 white marble with Sienna yellow insertions. It 
 has long fluted consoles and a vase in low relief 
 on the central panel of the frieze. 
 
 Harewood. — The Adam drawings for the 
 interior of Harewood, in Yorkshire, form an 
 important group of designs all dated 1765. 
 The carcase of the house had been in progress 
 from about 1760, John Carr, of York, being 
 the local architect on the spot working in con- 
 junction with Adam, more particularly in 
 reference to the exterior and the plan, which 
 both represent a compromise between the older 
 tradition and Robert Adam's newer ideals. 
 Adam's plans and elevations for interiors at 
 Harewood occupy many sheets of drawings, 
 and show more work even than was ever realised. 
 They cover the whole of the interior, and include 
 accessory buildings, which do not appear to have 
 been built. Each room is shown by a separate 
 sheet, giving a detail plan, with the four elevations 
 of the walls drawn round it. The correspondence 
 of these drawings with the actual work shows 
 that extraordinary fidelity which astonishes us 
 in Adam's executed works. The detail can be 
 authenticated by the photographs I have had 
 taken, in all oases, proving that what Eobert 
 Adam designed was faithfully produced. 
 
 Many alternative first and second designs 
 exist, but once the drawing was approved, the 
 work seems henceforth to have been carried 
 through exactly as it was shown by him. It is. 
 
 a great testimony to the confidence that was 
 placed in Adam, and to his own power of realising 
 his intentions. The Hall at Harewood is on a 
 large scale and, though less imposing and masterly 
 than that of Sypn, is yet a monumental example 
 ,of Robert Adam's work. The bold engaged 
 columns, though unusual with him^ — he habitu- 
 ally used pilasters — are shown as of fuUy three- 
 quarters' projection in his original design. The 
 main feature of each wall is emphasised by an 
 arch ; in particular opposite to the entrance door- 
 way was a deeply recessed archway with niches, 
 which has since been fiUed up on the Hall side. 
 The ceiling of the Hall is flatly treated with a 
 central octagonal feature. On the walls are 
 medallions and panels, and on the flag in one of 
 them is the date 1767, which wiU be that of the 
 completion of this interior, as the drawing for 
 the Hall is dated 1765, and for the fireplace 1766. 
 The Music Tloom, entered on the right, is a 
 fine Adam interior still possessing the original 
 carpet, which reflects the design of the ceiling. 
 The medallions on the walls are ascribed to 
 Angehca KauSmarm, and the landscapes to 
 Zucchi, while the portrait of the first Earl of 
 Harewood, in an Adam frame, is .by Hoppner. 
 It should be noted that all Adam's drawings for 
 the furniture at Harewood are missing. It is- 
 probable that they went direct to Chippendale, 
 and were not returned. 
 
 The Great Glallery has been altered ; the chim- 
 ney piece has been moved to the Dining,Room. 
 It is a fine instance of the early type of a pair 
 of tall graceful women. The frieze and enclosing 
 mouldings were of ormolu, with a purple ground 
 to the bas-relief panels. The figures were united 
 by light and graceful swags. 
 
 The fine ceiling of the Gallery was carriedout 
 by Rose from a large coloured drawing by AdJEls^ 
 dated 1769. It is exceedingly good in relative 
 scale and ingenious in pattern. 
 
 The' curtain boxes to the windows are charac- 
 teristic, and the pendant valences, carved by 
 Chippendale in wood, are so skilfully executed 
 as to quite deceptively match the deep blue 
 colour, as well as the fabric of the curtains. 
 
 This doubtless was so arranged to obviate the 
 bad effect of the dust and corrosion of any woven 
 material at that height. 
 
 The window piers have magnificent console- 
 tables with mirrors over them. The former 
 follow a design, made by Robert Adam for Sir 
 Lawrence Dundas in 1765, with interesting modi- 
 fications of detail. The white marble tops have 
 coloured inlays and gold framings. The mirrors 
 have oval paintings by Angelica Kauf&nann. 
 
21 
 
 Syon House, CBiMNa in Dining-Eoom. 
 
22 
 
 The Salon in the centre of the south front has 
 been altered by book-casings. Adam had placed 
 screens of columns across the apses, with a 
 pedimented doorway as a centre between them. 
 The pair of splendid mantelpieces on the two 
 side walls remain complete with their over- 
 mantles in exact accordance with his drawing. 
 The composition which he shows occupying the 
 central panel is a " Sacrifice." 
 
 A tourist, writing in 1787, says : " All the 
 rooms are equally elegant and costly, but the 
 large Gallery and the Great Drawing Room 
 present such a show of magnificence and art, as 
 the eye hath scarce seen .... The Great Drawing 
 Room is as handsome as designs and gilding can 
 make it ; here are seen elegant glasses, ornamented 
 with festoons, particularly light and beautiful ; 
 also tables with same. The whole has been 
 furnished only a year by Chippendale, of St. 
 Martin's Lane." 
 
 The lesser Drawing Room was apparently 
 an Etruscan room. 
 
 Croome Court, in Worcestershire, and Bowood, 
 in Wiltshire, both present Adam work of the 
 early period, but in each case these are alteration 
 and decoration works to buildings, erected mainly 
 by others, and need not be discussed here. 
 
 Kedleston, Derbyshire. — James Paine tells us 
 that in 1761 he prepared the designs for Kedles- 
 ton which appear in his book. This vigorous 
 but rather heavy-handed architect enjoyed a 
 great reputation and an enormous practice in 
 the North of England. His scheme was to buUd 
 a centre block with four detached wings, con- 
 nected by quadrant corridors treated as colon- 
 nades. The plan was never completed, and only 
 two wings with their connections exist. 
 
 He says that he accepted the previous design 
 of Brettingham for the four wings, but himself 
 " planned the centre block and connecting 
 corridors." 
 
 This bears out a memorandum by the first 
 Lord Scarsdale, recording that he built the 
 house between the years 1758-68, and makes 
 it probable that Brettingham was the first 
 architect. 
 
 Adam's earliest drawings relate to carpets 
 and ceiling designs, and it would appear most 
 probable that, at ficrst-, he was to complete the 
 interior. He appears to have been already 
 working in association with Fame at Alnwick. 
 
 The most marked feature of Paine's centre 
 block was a great columned hall and a circular 
 salon, between which he proposed to place the 
 main staircase of the house. Subsequently, how- 
 ever, according to his own account, finding 
 
 himself too busy in other parts of England to 
 devote to the proposed building the close atten- 
 tion which so great a work required, he requested 
 to be allowed to resign the task, "whereupon 
 it was entrusted to those able and ingenious 
 artists, Messrs. Robert and James Adam." 
 
 In point of fact he was very much preoccupied 
 with Worksop, which had just been burnt down 
 (October, 1761) a month .after its completion. 
 
 From all this we may assume that Lord Scars- 
 dale had lost faith in the scheme propounded by 
 Paine, and that Robert Adam was called in to 
 complete and particularly to decorate the struc- 
 ture. 
 
 Adam revised the plan by suppressing the 
 great staircase, by which change of plan the idea 
 of a great, villa in the antique manner was better 
 realised. The bedrooms above were purely 
 secondary, and a minor staircase was all that 
 was required. A grand suite of unbroken state 
 apartments on one level was thus secured. 
 
 It is evident from the external appearance 
 ' of Kedleston that the elegant centre of the south 
 front is entirely due to Robert Adam. It was a 
 part only of a fine and characteristic composi- 
 tion. Had Adam's design been carried out 
 this front would have been complete in itself, 
 and would have illustrated his principle of 
 " movement," as expounded in the prefaces to 
 his " Works." 
 
 The large original Adam drawings in the 
 Soane Collection show that the north fagade 
 has merely been revised by him, the circular 
 medallions under the portico being, for instance, 
 added. Except, in fact, for a few minor details 
 and a superior air of refuiement, this front agrees 
 with Paine's elevation. 
 
 The interior of Kedleston, however, is obvi- 
 ously entirely by Adam, and it is of remarkable 
 interest, because it is a development of the work 
 at Shardeloes, and is also closely related to 
 Ihe great interiors of Syon, which were in 
 progress at the time. 
 
 Of the thought and labour that Robert Adam 
 gave to Kedleston there is remarkable evidence. 
 Polios of designs in colour and pencil, some of 
 which were used, while others remain as studies, 
 exist. Every detail was brought into the scheme, 
 furniture, grates, fire-irons and fenders, all 
 testify to the thoroughness and comprehensive 
 character of his work as an architect. 
 
 The Salon, or Rotunda, into which the Great 
 Hall leads, is remarkable for its successful 
 proportion. It is forty-two feet in diameter and 
 fifty-five feet high, with four alcoves in extension 
 of each plan, each eleven feet across and twenty- 
 
23 
 
 1« 
 
 
 P 
 o 
 
 w 
 
 o 
 
24 
 
 two feet high. The usual diameter of Adam 
 rotundas is about thirty feet. 
 
 The coffered dome is very pleasant in scale 
 and treatment, and there is great charm in the 
 lighting effect. 
 
 The decorative tablet panels surmounted by 
 candelabra on the walls are notable pieces of 
 stucco work. The minute amorini are polished 
 to a marble surface and relieved by a dull red 
 backgrdund and gildecj frames. The striking cast 
 metal altars, and vases in the alcoves, were 
 connected with the hot air scheme of heating, 
 employed by the Adams in these rotundas. 
 
 The Great Hall and Salon lead on the right 
 into the Dining Room, where Adam's attention 
 to detail is conspicuous in the treatment of the 
 alcove, which is flanked by two doorways of 
 exquisite finish. 
 
 The ceiling is planned to receive landscapes 
 by Zuccarelli and Zucchi. Other panel pictures 
 decorate the walls. 
 
 On the left of the Hall and Salon is the Music 
 room, which contains an interesting organ case, 
 richly gilt but simple in design. Adam's original 
 design was far more elaborate. The white marble 
 cWmney piece is inlaid with blue-john. 
 
 The Great Drawing Eoom, which was originally 
 hung with blue damask, has a coved and richly 
 decorated ceiling. It follows closely a design 
 dated 1760. The freedom of the decoration is 
 reminiscent of the earlier Adam work, as at 
 Hatchlands. 
 
 The mantelpiece, with a pair of tall figures, 
 follows the ideal set at that house and at Croome. 
 The Venetian window, the columns and pedi- 
 ment of which, like the doorcases, are of Derby- 
 shire alabaster, is remarkable for its scale and 
 planning, by which an effect of great depth and 
 richness is obtained. 
 
 The furniture of this room is of interest. 
 Alongside of beautiful tables and mirrors, 
 essentially typical of his style, are four massive 
 sofas with elaborately carved and solidly gilt 
 merfolk, mingled with dolphins and palm leaves, 
 quite Venetian in taste, which contrast curiously 
 with the lighter and more delicate devices for 
 which Robert Adam was famous. 
 
 We are reminded of Adam's comment, when 
 publishing the plate in the " Works" of the 
 Empress Catherine's piano ; — " This design was 
 much altered by the person who executed it." 
 Adam's drawing in the Soane Collection for the 
 sofa, signed " R. Adam, architect, 1762," shows 
 how the architectural limits -he observed have 
 been overpast. 
 Mrs. Montagu had a similar sofa, according 
 
 to the note on the drawing, but with a different 
 colouring in the upholstery, one design being 
 red and the other green. 
 
 Her sofa, however, must have been executed 
 in a style severely classic, so as to accord with 
 the beautiful mantelpiece, which Adam also 
 designed in 1766 for her house in Hill Street. 
 
 In the Library, unlike the other apartments 
 on this floor, the Doric pillars and the entablature 
 of the doors are in wood, and are somewhat 
 heavy in scale and treatment. The ceiling is 
 decorated in tints of blue, pink, and mauve. The 
 chimney-piece agrees with Adam's drawing. The 
 State Boudoir and its Ante-room are separated 
 by a screen of columns and pilasters, grouped 
 in relation to a segmental archway, late Roman 
 in style. 
 
 In these rooms there is less of the early Geor- 
 gian influence which Adam had set out to re- 
 form, and a lighter scheme of decoration and 
 furnishing prevails. 
 
 The subsidiary buildings in the grounds and 
 the great bridge are fihe examples of Adam's 
 treatment of accessories to his main group. 
 
 8yon House. — The plan of Syon in the "Works" 
 bears the date 1761, which will be the time when 
 Adam's connection with the work began. His 
 own statement, however, gives 1762 as the 
 year in which the Duke of Northumberland 
 resolved to fit up the apartments "entirely in 
 the antique style." Adam says " the idea was, 
 to me, a favourite one, the subject great, the 
 expense unlimited, and the Duke himself a per- 
 son of extensive knowledge and correct taste 
 in architecture." 
 
 Adam had just completed Shardeloes, and 
 resemblances can be traced between the details 
 employed there and those used in the earlier 
 rooms at Syon. For instance, the ceiling of the 
 Dining Eoom is closely related to that of the 
 Library at Shardeloes. 
 
 The work must have been in progress many 
 years, as one of the carpets is dated 1769, and 
 the whole of the intended scheme was, even so, 
 never realised, as the most important feature 
 of the plan, the central rotunda, was not executed. 
 This •salon was needed to bring the entire suite 
 toa focus and connect together all theapartments, 
 serving, in Adam's own words," for generalrendez- 
 vous, and for public entertainments with illu- 
 minations, dancing and music." Apparently, in 
 September, 1768, this rotunda was temporarily 
 erected for the reception given to the King of 
 Denmark, when 300 persons were entertained 
 in the room, " without the least bustle." 
 Adam himself defines the position he had to 
 
25 
 
 deal with, in creating this magnificent suite of 
 rooms at Syon within the existing walls of the 
 house. " Some inequality in the levels on the 
 old floors, and some want of height to the en- 
 larged apartments were," he says, " the chief 
 difficulties with which I had to struggle." 
 
 Entering at once 
 the Great Hall, the 
 full grandeur of his 
 conception is realised. 
 This interior, in a 
 creamy white with a 
 black and white 
 marble floor, realises 
 the classic ideal of 
 pure form and re- 
 strained ornament. 
 
 Late in the after- 
 noon the western 
 surJight. strikes down 
 from the upper range 
 of windows, produc- 
 ing a wonderful effect 
 of light and shade. 
 The size, 60 feet by 
 30 feet by 30 feet, is 
 about that of the 
 great room at Wilton, 
 but no greater con- 
 trast between the two 
 interiors can well be 
 imagined, and we 
 realise at once how 
 much has happened 
 in the intervening 
 century. The pro- 
 blem of the dimen- 
 sions is solved by 
 Robert Adam on en- 
 tirely different lines 
 to those followed by 
 Inigo Jones. He re- 
 duces his length by 
 a great apse at one 
 end, and a square 
 recess at the other, 
 the latter having a 
 
 screen of columns. The connecting walls have 
 each five windows and a door. Such are the 
 simple elements out of which this fine interior 
 has been evolved. 
 
 The highly original ceiling with its large crossed 
 beams, doubtless arose from his wish to reduce 
 the excessive height of the bare structure, and 
 the idea is worked out with great skill. 
 
 A broad band of ornament frames the central 
 
 oblong and ties the whole design together. 
 The disposition of the floor follows that of the 
 ceiling. It is doubtful if Adam ever used the 
 ' Doric order, which he preferred for halls, with 
 better effect. 
 The steps, which were necessary to reach the 
 
 Syon House. Door in Gallery. 
 
 principal floor level at both ends of the Hall, 
 are so cleverly worked in that they seem an 
 additional charm, rather than a difficulty 
 overcome. 
 
 To step up from the Hall to the Ante-room 
 is to pass into another world. It is Rome of 
 the most lavish epoch of the Empire, when the 
 world's wealth poured as a great river into the 
 all-powerful metropolis. Colour reigns supreme 
 
26 
 
 with a predominanoe of solid gilding. The key- 
 note has been twelve ancient columns of verde- 
 antique, recovered from the bed of the Tiber. 
 To these shafts Ionic capitals solidly gilt have 
 been added, with a new entablature, in which 
 the frieze is decorated with a honeysuckle in 
 gold on a bright blue ground. The walls are pale 
 green with doors in dark mahogany and gold. 
 Green bronze is also used in the bas-reMef over 
 the fireplace. 
 
 The floor is a remarkable piece of scagliola, very 
 highly polished, and marvellously preserved. 
 The colours are yellow, bright and dark red, 
 reaching to chocolate, and a peculiarly soft 
 greenish grey, relieved by some actual blue. 
 
 The architectural interest of the room centres 
 in the very clever arrangement of the twelve 
 columns, as the room is not really square, being 
 36 ft. 6 in. by 30 ft., with a height of 21 ft. 
 
 The desired square set-out is obtained by 
 bringing forward the columns on the window side 
 and carrying across the entablature, the vertical 
 line being maintained by statues upright on the 
 columns. Thus the room is square in effect 
 with the minimum loss of floor space. 
 
 Entering the Dining Room we leave colour 
 behind us and return to an effect of white, but 
 in a warmer tone and with a free relief from 
 gilding. This room would seem to be one of 
 those first completed at Syon. Each end of the 
 room has an apse with a screen of columns across 
 it, and the half domes are well ornamented but 
 without the extreme beauty of those at Kenwood. 
 A flat band carried round the room, level with 
 the top members of the cornice of the order 
 connects the end and side walls, a treatment 
 favoured by Adam. 
 
 With the Red Drawing Room colour again 
 resumes its sway. The walls are hung with 
 Spitalfields silk, in which the pattern of flowers 
 and ribbons in grey shimmers like silver on a 
 plum coloured ground. The ceiling has a deep 
 cove, which, together with the central flat, is 
 all set out in octagons and diamonds, rather 
 small in scale. These have been painted with 
 figures by Angelica Kauffmann, too small for 
 their position, and, in addition, so emphasised 
 by bright blue grounds, as to produce 
 a spotty efieet, which is somewhat dis- 
 tracting. The Adam carpet is of a good and 
 restful design, the colours pink and yellow with 
 some blue, all now very harmonious. It is 
 dated " 1769, T. Moore." 
 
 The two doorways are remarkable forthe ivory 
 grounds to the pilasters, which are overlaid in 
 ormolu. 
 
 The white statuary marble mantelpiece is 
 a masterpiece of applied ormolu. The enrich- 
 ments are chased and perforated frets, apphques, 
 even the flutes of the columns have tiny strings 
 of beads which are attached to the fillets between 
 the flutes. The rosettes, swags, and even the 
 dentils are of the same metal. It is like an 
 overdress of gold lace thrown upon the white 
 marble form. 
 
 This drawing room is Adam's Ante-room to 
 the real Withdrawing, or Ladies', Room, the 
 gallery, which he planned for their particular 
 delight. " Furnished in a style to afiord great 
 variety and amusement," is his own expression. 
 It is certainly a marvellous interior, because it 
 is the Ehzabethan- Jacobean gallery seen through 
 a different medium. The problem was the narrow 
 width of 14 ft., with a length of 136 ft., and a 
 height the same as the width. These are quite 
 the old dimensions for galleries in England, and 
 it was only the orthodox classic ideas of pro- 
 portion, that seemed to make them incapable of 
 solution. Robert Adam accordingly dealt with 
 the problem on his own lines, not, perhaps, with- 
 out some observation and reflection on the many 
 older galleries, which he must have seen in 
 various parts of the country. His scheme is 
 that of a unit of four pilasters, with wide intervals 
 or bays, centred upon the three doors and two 
 fireplaces, so that in the perspective a sense oi 
 spacing and variety is obtained, which mitigates 
 the great extent of the gallery in length. The 
 opposite wall, with its eleven windows, could 
 not be made to agree with this set-out, so it has 
 been boldly disregarded. 
 
 The pilasters, however, are retained to frame 
 up the windows, maintain the bala,noe of the 
 two sides, and give the required vertical 
 lines in the perspective of the whole. 
 
 The ceiling is daringly set out with circles, 
 repeated down the lengfA of the room, and held ' 
 in an octagonal framework separated by squares. 
 Unity is obtained by cross lines, which lead the 
 eye down the vista of the gallery with a tendency 
 to expand its width. The wide compartments 
 in which the doors and fireplaces occur are 
 skilfully treated with niches and circles, and 
 the main order of pilasters is supported by a 
 secondary Ionic, between which the bookshelves 
 are fitted in. 
 
 The deep frieze above the architrave cornice 
 of this minor order is varied with landscape and 
 portrait panels, and by some pircular recesses for 
 busts and choice Vases. 
 
 The minor closets and central recess are con- 
 versational retreats. The square closet is 
 
27 
 
 iateresting, but the gem is the circular domed 
 boudoir, which realises the setting of an eigh- 
 teenth century print, of the age of Watteau, 
 Lancret and Boucher. 
 
 The ceiling paintings of the gallery are rather 
 small and too pretty. The general effect of 
 the faded pink and green of the waO decorations 
 is good. It must all have been immensely gay 
 when new and fresh. Of Adam design there are 
 two pairs of beautiful tables of marquetry with 
 carved and fluted legs and framework. One 
 of them has a scroll pattern working from twO 
 centres, so as to fill in the oblong shape of the 
 table top. It is inlaid in yellow and green on 
 brown. The other has an all-over pattern. 
 They are English made. Two half-circle console 
 tables, carved and gilt with urns worked into 
 the base, and bearing table tops of inlaid marble, 
 are also of Adam design, as well as two oblong 
 console tables, the tops of which are of mosaic. 
 
 The highly-important work at Osterley, in the 
 same locality, while partly of the same date as 
 Syon, also contains examples of Robert Adam's 
 later style. Space does not allow of more than a 
 reference here, but in the forthcoming book the 
 house will be fully illustrated and described by 
 the special permission of the owners. Here, as at 
 Apsley House, English execution was made a 
 special feature. Not only does this fact dispose 
 of the idea that Robert Adam was merely in- 
 debted to and dependent on Italians, but it also 
 confirm's Soane's statement as to the beneficial 
 effect of Adam's influence on the arts and manu- 
 factures of the time. 
 
 Luton Hoo, for the Earl of Bute (1767-8 period) 
 must also be passed over, though it was certainly 
 a very important transition work and possessed 
 probably the finest of all the Adam libraries. 
 Unfortunately this work no longer exists owing 
 to a fire and later reconstructions. 
 
 Kenwood, Hampstead, for Robert Adam's 
 friend and patron, the great Earl of Mansfield 
 happily remains. ' 
 
 Kenwood, is a villa design created out of 
 an older existing house. Changes, following 
 on the death of the great Earl of' Mansfield 
 and of his architect, have altered its character 
 externally, the removal of the main road and 
 the abolition of the forecourt tending to give 
 it more the character of a country-house. 
 
 The Portico, therefore, at present cannot be 
 said to possess its original effect, while on the 
 garden side the decay of the original stucco 
 arabesques has led to a replastering now devoid 
 of the ornate character of the original. 
 Passing through the Hall of an Adam character, 
 
 a very pleasant ante-room, lit by an end Venetian 
 window towards the south, leads into the " Adam 
 Room," as it is now appropriately called. This 
 truly magnificent apartment ranks high amongst 
 the great chambers to be found in England, 
 and takes a leading place in the list of its archi- 
 tect's achievements. 
 
 Robert Adam's own account is as follows : — 
 
 " The great room with its ante-room was begun 
 by Lord Mansfield's orders in the year 1767, and 
 was intended both for a library and a room for 
 receiving company. The circular recesses were, 
 therefore, fitted up for the former purpose, and 
 the square part or body of the room made suit- 
 able to the latter." This duality of purpose 
 corresponded with the character of the client. 
 
 " The ceiUng," Adam tells us, "is in the 
 form and style of those of the ancients. It 
 is an imitation of a flat arch, which is extremely 
 beautiful, and much more perfect than that 
 which is commonly called the coved ceiling." 
 
 " The coved ceiling, which is a portion or 
 quadrant of a circle round the room, and rising 
 to a flat in the centre, seems to be altogether 
 of modern invention,and admits of some elegance 
 in the decoration." 
 
 The eighteenth century architects, following 
 Palladio and the Italians, had established in 
 England the lofty piano nohile of Italy, and 
 had been much exercised by the excessive height 
 so obtained, unsuited as it was for Uving rooms 
 in our northern climate. The cove as described 
 by Adam above, is found in all the houses of the 
 time, particularly in those of single and double 
 cube dimensions, experiments to which the 
 Palladian School were excessively devoted. 
 
 The State Dining Room at Bowood is a good 
 example of the coved type, and in that instance 
 Adam has certainly invested it with " some 
 elegance in the decoration." 
 
 The stucco work at Kenwood was by Rose, the 
 plasterer, who was also employed by Adam at 
 Syon, etc. " The paintings," he says, " are 
 elegantly performed by Mr. Antonio Zucohi, a 
 Venetian painter of great eminence ; and the 
 grounds of the panels and freeses are coloured 
 with hght tijits of pink and green, so as to take 
 off the glare of white, so common in every ceiling, 
 till of late. This has always appeared to me so 
 cold and unfinished, that I ventured to introduce 
 this variety of grounds at once to reUeve the 
 ornaments, the crudeness of the white, and 
 create a harmony between the ceiling and side 
 walls with their hangings, pictures and other 
 decorations." 
 
 Here we have a clear statement of Robert 
 
28 
 
 Adam's ideas. His ideal of low relief in schemes 
 of house decoration, with details of elegance 
 and refinement, carries him on to the use of flat 
 tones of colour, which shall give the necessary 
 emphasis to the ornament. 
 
 It is not, properly speaking, that " picking 
 out " method which followed later, as the style 
 degenerated' in the hands of his followers and 
 successors. That detestable method of decoration 
 was, however, an easy step down as soon as 
 the Adam manner was imitated and cheapened. 
 
 A main feature of the Kenwood Great Eoom is 
 the pair of apses with their screens of columns, 
 the entablatures of which, carried straight across 
 at the spring of the haK domes, bind together 
 the whole design of the interior. By this means 
 an effect of perspective and some mystery of 
 light and shade are produced. 
 
 The half domes are masterly pieces of decora- 
 tive stucco work, worthy of Pirro Ligorio. him- 
 self. The great vault is well set out in flat 
 compartments varied in proportion, and adorned 
 with ovals, half ovals and circles. These are 
 filled in with highly-coloured paintings, executed 
 in tones strong enough to stand the rich gilding, 
 which forms so large an element in the whole 
 efiect. The fluted columns in white are a strong 
 element in a successful scheme. 
 
 Continuity of design between the two apses 
 and the centre bay is secured by a bold 
 honeysuckle band at the base of the vault and 
 of the apses. 
 
 It is a recall of the narrower frieze of *he 
 entablature where lions' and bulls' heads, the 
 family crests, are repeated in a chain of running 
 ornament. 
 
 The two large arched recesses on either side 
 of the fireplace had originally characteristic 
 Adam mirrors and settees. 
 
 The bookcases of the apses had originally 
 sohd dados. 
 
 On the piers between the windows are two 
 mirrors in carved wood and gilded frames. 
 These are illustrated in the " Works." 
 
 The white statuary mantelpiece has carved 
 pilasters, bulls' heads and sphinxes. Over it is 
 the imposing portrait of the Earl, by David 
 Martin (1736-1798), set in a panel with a finely 
 designed flat framework. The bottom border 
 which balanped the top cresting has been swal- 
 lowed up by an excess in the size of the picture. 
 
 IFrom an account of 1776 it appears that the 
 Hall and other rooms, except the Library, had 
 their walls covered with Indian or Chinese 
 papers. ' 
 
 The Adelphi scheme was launched while 
 
 Kenwood was in progress. It appears to have 
 been somewhat unfortunately undertaken, and 
 it is unlikely that Robert Adam had any con- 
 ception of the drag that it was to prove upon his 
 hitherto promising career. 
 
 The whole subject of Adam's great influence 
 upon the architecture of London requires a 
 volume in itself, and with regret I have con- 
 cluded that it cannot be brought within the 
 scope of these lectures. One or two leading 
 points may be given. Shelburne, now Lans- 
 dovme House, begun about 1762 for the Earl of 
 Bute, was sold by him to the Earl of Shelburne 
 in 1765, and the work of completion went on 
 until 1768. It was in the contract of sale that 
 the house was to be completed according to 
 the original scheme by the Adams, the vendor 
 sharing in the expense. This house is, of 
 course, a very important example of Adam's 
 work. 
 
 Mansfield Street (1770), was first planned to 
 lead up to a great house, which was not built. 
 The houses here follow upon the Adelphi, and 
 contain interesting work. 
 
 Portland Place, as first intended in 1773, was 
 to have been a corso of great houses. When the 
 original idea fell through, the enterprise appears 
 to have been left to James Adam to carry out 
 in a much less stately and magnificent manner, 
 1776-78. The war time delayed the scheme of the 
 new street, and much of it was afterwards merely 
 a continuation by Nash, or else the work of 
 independent builders. One of the finest of Adam 
 town houses is No. 20, St. James's Square, but 
 even this was less magnificent in its interiors than 
 old Derby House, in Grosvenor Square, which 
 no longer exists. An example, standing in a 
 class by itself, is Home ffoMsejinPortman Square, 
 which exhibits a late phase of Adam work. 
 In spite of alterations in the first halt of the 
 nineteenth century, this house still gives a 
 fine idea of the golden age of late Georgian 
 magnificence. 
 
 Fitzroy Square (1790) was only in hand at the 
 time of Adam's death ; it was stopped by the 
 outbreak of the great war after only two sides 
 were buUt. The other two, executed quite 
 twenty years later, show the altered temper of 
 the times. 
 
 Of the vanished British Gbffee House, in Cock- 
 spur Street, Soane, who, of course, knew it well, 
 spoke in his lectures to the Royal Academy, 
 declaring that, quite as much as the Register 
 House of Scotland, in Edinburgh, it was a monu- 
 ment to the ability of its architect. 
 
 The reality of Robert Adam's influence on 
 
29 
 
 the architecture of the time is shown by the 
 persistent attribution to him, personaily, of a 
 variety of the buildings of his contemporaries, 
 whose names are practically, if not entirely, 
 forgotten. 
 
 ' The city of London was least affected by his 
 revolution, the all-pervading work of Wren, 
 , and his immediate followers, constituting a 
 strong local tradition. 
 
 In the same way the work of Robert Adam in 
 Scotland would here make quite impossible 
 demands on our time and space. It must 
 suffice to call attention to the noble Register 
 Home of Scotland, facing the end of the North 
 Bridge in Edinburgh, a work remarkable for the 
 Grecian refinement of its detail, and to the 
 
 later, grand and massively simple University, as 
 originally designed by Robert Adam. -These will 
 all be dealt with at length in the forthcoming 
 book. 
 
 Unfortunately the Revolutionary Wars fol- 
 lowing Robert Adam's death in 1792 blighted 
 the fair prospects of that great work, the Uni- 
 versity, as well as those of Charlotte Square 
 (1791) with its intended church. 
 
 On the resumption of both of these under- 
 takings, after the war, by the new generation 
 that had sprung up, the Adam tradition had 
 already been clouded over, and the resulting 
 work fell far short of the intentions of that great 
 architect of the last half of the eighteenth 
 century, Robert Adam. 
 
 Vashs that belonged to Robert Adam now in Sie John Soanb's Museum. 
 
2>o 
 
 LECTURE III.— Delivered May i^th, ig20. 
 
 If architecture is to be seriously regarded as 
 a reflection and record of the life in all its varied 
 aspects of any particular period, then we must 
 expect to find that Sir John Soane, however 
 great an admirer he may have been of the 
 architectural genius of his own early days in 
 Loiidon, would yet, in his own subsequent work, 
 achieve an artistic effect very different in 
 character to that realised with such success by 
 Robert Adam. 
 
 Much had happened since the climax of the 
 late Georgian prosperity and- magnificence, 
 coincident with the mid- point of Robert Adam's 
 career as a practising architect in London, a 
 date which may, be taken as almost that of 
 Soane's first great success, the winning of the 
 gold medal of the Royal Academy in 1776. 
 
 The disastrous American War, the domestic 
 troubles of the Gordon Riots, the collapse of 
 the King's system of personal Government 
 through Lord North's Ministry (1770-1782), 
 were only premonitory symptoms of the great 
 avalanche of the Revolutionary Wars (1793- 
 1815) which overwhelmed the existing social 
 order in Central Europe, and profoundly 
 modified that of our own country. 
 
 Robert Adam's own work, in his last years, 
 when under Pitt's guidance the country 
 appeared to be recovering its prosperity, seems 
 to have assumed a graver cast. 
 
 By a curious inversion a greater parade of 
 architecture is demanded on the exterior of the 
 houses, a more distinctive assertion of the class 
 rather than of the individual, and the interiors 
 tend to lose their former importance. A more 
 equal standard of decoration, a type in fact is 
 being established for a majority, to which each 
 individual will more or less be driven to conform. 
 
 Unlike Robert Adam, who was never recog- 
 nised, young Soane was a chosen pupil of the 
 Royal Academy. Sir William Chambers, founder 
 and protector of the infant institution, had 
 approved of his Triumphal Bridge, and had 
 himself introduced the successful student to 
 the Royal Patron, as a preliminary to his start 
 upon his grand tour. 
 
 Chambers was incapable of change. In his 
 last edition (1791) of the " Civil Architecture" 
 of 1759 he reiterates his earlier condemnation 
 
 of Greek architecture. The work of Adam and 
 Stuart was unchaste, subversive of true prin- 
 ciples, and students and the pubhcnnust be 
 protected, on principle, from its pernicious 
 influence. This frame of mind is a recurrent 
 phenomenon, and there is no particular way of 
 dealing with it, other than that of maintaining 
 a sound tradition of artistic liberty and equality, 
 if not of fraternity. 
 
 It is to Soane's credit that his individuality 
 was strong enough to withstand this pressure. 
 As a pupil of George Dance, R.A., he had been 
 in touch with a gifted designer, whose trend 
 was towards experimental essays, and new com- 
 binations. Unfortunately, Dance was weak on 
 the constructive side, as well as somewhat 
 lacking in energy. He seems to have admired 
 the force and determination of his pupil. 
 "Remember," he writes to Soane, " your motto, 
 Mihi.turpe reUnqui," while at another time he 
 cautions him to " sprinkle cool patience upon 
 the heat and flame of thy distemper." 
 
 Henry Holland, jun., to whom Soane appears 
 to have been an assistant from 1772 to 1776 or 
 1777, was also an architect of rare ability, and a 
 man of a modest and retiring nature. His earlier 
 work is like that of Robert Adam and James 
 Wyatt, but in the interiors of Carlton Palace 
 he seems to have struck a note more definitely 
 , Graeco-Roman, for which ," Empire " is, perhaps, 
 as nearly an equivalent term as any. 
 
 Soane's association in his Roman days with 
 the Bishop of Derry, afterwards first Marquess 
 of Bristol, seems to have brought him into 
 touch with a learned society imbued with the 
 classics. He makes designs for a " dining 
 rooni " and a " canine residence " in the antique 
 manner, but follows it up by modern versions 
 of the same. This is very characteristic of 
 Soane's practical habit of mind. 
 r He studies the " antique," but as an artist 
 who is in search of material for the development 
 of his own powers and the realisation of his own 
 ideals. A merely dilettante attitude was alien 
 to his temperament.J This is revealed in his 
 attitude to a draughtsman, who showed him 
 the usual sketches of the Pantheon portico at 
 Rome. " Are the columns equally spaced," he 
 inquires, and when the sketcher hesitates, a curt 
 
31 
 
 " Ah, I see you do not know ! " closes the 
 discussion. He himself had measured the 
 Pantheon, and the bearing of the facts had 
 not been lost upon him. 
 
 The effect of Soane's grand tour upon his 
 mind appears to have been that of modifying 
 his first love of Adam and Wyatt work, through 
 the deep impression made upon him by the 
 Greek Doric of Psestum and Sicily. As is well 
 known, he was prevented by circumstances from 
 reaching Athens, and seeing the masterpieces 
 of the Doric and Ionic styles in all their effective- 
 ness. The Street of Tombs at Pompeii also, 
 I fancy, profoundly impressed him. 
 
 The consequence was that when Sotae began 
 to rebuild the Bank in 1794, he treated its screen- 
 wall decorative architecture on lines which were 
 profoundly original. The new work was some- 
 thing entirely different from that which might 
 have been predicted from a pupil of the designer 
 of Newgate, and of a student who had come so 
 directly under the influence of Chambers. 
 
 The interior of the Bank especially is remark- 
 able because, although there is an apparent 
 following of the scheme of the Roman thermse, 
 the character of the design is entirely novel. 
 It is more modern than much that is projected 
 
 J 'OT executed to-day. Soane's feeling for the 
 i bones of the architectural corpus is almost 
 
 ' uncanny. The Bank interiors are as remark- 
 able in that way as the much later work of 
 Due in the Palais de Justice at Paris. 
 
 When allowance has been made for the 
 temper of Soane's age, as one of war with all its 
 revulsions and ensuing exhaustion, his work 
 
 / holds good as an astonishing reversion to the 
 
 I) bare realities of design, after the magnificence 
 of Adam decoration and ornament. 
 
 Soane possessed a great feeling for surfaces, 
 and his linear method of decoration perhaps 
 arises from that source, as though he would 
 
 1^ abolish all projections, lest any shadows or 
 excrescences might detract from their effective- 
 ness. At the same time these considerations 
 must not be pushed too far, as though Soane, 
 was wedded to a clearly-defined and closely- 
 , reasoned logic. He never was a clear thinker ; 
 on the contrary, he is given to flashes, often 
 strangely phrased, which burst through an 
 ultra dry form of verbal expression. Only when 
 he is roused does Soane break through this 
 acquired reserve, and even then there is a 
 certain Cloudiness, witnessed by phrases hke 
 the " poetry of architecture," to be achieved 
 apparently by the union of forms and qualities 
 usually regarded as antagonistic. It is easy to 
 
 understand, therefore, that the attitude of his 
 contemporaries was one of bewilderment, not 
 unmixed with ridicule. 
 
 George Wightwick truly reports that no 
 architect was ever less beholden to his own 
 time, nor anyone more crudely assailed. It 
 would have- been too much to expect that the 
 essential quality of Soane's .art should be 
 generally appreciated in his own time. Even 
 to-day it arouses questionings as to method 
 after the general harmony of the whole has been 
 admitted. 
 f It is not pretended that Soane as an architect ' 
 ( ranks with a master like Robert Adam. He is i 
 always a pioneer, pointing towards something, 
 which, perhaps, is incapable of being realised, 
 and all the time hampered himself by difficulties 
 of expression never completely mastered. 
 
 For one thing Soane's design is extraordin-i 
 arily fluid; he multiplies alternatives to an 
 extent which produces absolute confusion, 
 when the building; to which so many drawings, 
 all apparently final, refer, is very often no 
 longer in existence. 
 
 Worst of all Soane is apt to repeat forms 
 already used by himself elsewhere, as though 
 he had himself grown weary of his own 
 vacillation. 
 
 This uncertainty of temper probably accounts 
 for the ridiculous importance that he attached 
 to P6re Laugier's, architectural dogmas, as set 
 forth in the " Essai sur Architecture " of 1755. 
 This amateurish effort owed its passing im- 
 portance to the circumstances of the time in 
 Prance. ' ' 
 
 A tide of revolt had set in against the license 
 of the Jesuit style, and the W-orthy, Father, 
 intent upon his intended reformation, pro- 
 pounded a short cut to purity by a drastic 
 amputation of the body of architecture. There 
 were to be no more pilasters, arcades, and high 
 basements, no domes or other exuberances ; all 
 was to be reduced to the pure Order of Columns 
 of the antique pattern. 
 
 There was, however, this anomaly, that in the 
 desert was to bloom a new flower, a triangular 
 church with three apses, at once mystical and 
 correct. Soane seems to have taken all this 
 quite seriously, and the implied dogmas were a 
 fatal handicap to his monumental designs on 
 several occasions. 
 
 All, important incident, that can only be lightly 
 touched upon here, was the check to Soane's 
 artistic development, arising out of the fatal 
 outbreak of the great wars in 17^3. v- 
 
 Had his new House of Lords design, approved 
 
32 
 
 in 1794-6, proceeded, as in times of peace it 
 certainly would have done, Soane should, by 
 the test of the execution of his ideas on an 
 adequate scale, have risen to a much higher 
 rank as an architect, and gained a more effective 
 influence on the art of his own, and probably 
 of Subsequent times. The problem of this design 
 
 Sir John Soane's House and Mdsbdm, No. 13, Lincoln's Inn 
 
 Fields. 
 
 . BuUt in 1812. House on the right, 1824. 
 
 Similar house on left, Soane's first house in the Fields, 1792. 
 
 could only, witK a man of his temperament, be 
 solved by the clamorous exigencies of the actual 
 work. He played with it for the remainder of 
 his life, without ever being pinned down to a 
 definite and convincing result. 
 
 The effect that a great range of state apart- 
 ments in a national building, like the Houses of 
 
 Parh'ament, would have produced in his hands 
 can be judged in part only from the interiors 
 of the Bank. Masterly as these are, they have 
 always been too disjointed by business neces- 
 sities, and too difficult of access, to have 
 produced the culminating effect promised by 
 the abandoned scheme. 
 
 Soane's buildings after the 
 crisis of the war are manifestly 
 crippled by a smaUness of scale 
 and means, inadequate for the 
 real grandeur of the design. 
 Dulwich Gallery and Mauso- 
 leum, for instance, do not, as 
 buUt, possess the impressive- 
 ness of which Soane's desi^ 
 was capable. 
 
 Deprived of this quality, his 
 architectural design is apt to be 
 regarded as mean and ugly, by 
 those who fail to appreciate the 
 method of the artist, and to re- 
 member that " the best of this 
 kind are but shadows, and the 
 worst no worse, if imagination 
 do but mend them." 
 
 It is against the critics that 
 they could see this in Gandy's 
 interpretations of Soanic de- 
 sign, and endeavoured to set 
 the one against the other. Of 
 the actual work executed by 
 Soane in 1823 at the old 
 Houses of Parliament, the 
 famous Scala Kegia, we have 
 only the drawings and some 
 contemporary report. It was 
 c'ay and night work, having 
 been rushed through in seven 
 months in order to gratify the 
 impatience of George IV. That 
 it was a, fine design, we have 
 the drawings of artists made 
 at the time to show, and the 
 only serious criticism seems 
 to have been that it was, as 
 usual, deficient in scale to 
 realise the fuU effect. It is 
 also possible that this interior 
 was not so reticent in detail as the rest of Soane's 
 work, but, when his buildings have disappeared, 
 it is unsafe to express an opinion on this head, 
 as experience of the effect of the Soane interiors 
 made upon varying spectators will soon demon- 
 strate. 
 The writer recalls his own impression of many 
 
years ago of the interior of the old Law Courts 
 at Westminster, probably the first Soane work 
 he ever saw. The earliest sight was bewildering ; 
 it was like something never seen before. It 
 defied criticism in detail, possessing a har- 
 mony of its own which called for complete 
 acceptance, or rejection, on the part of the 
 spectator. 
 
 This fact naturally accounts for the hostility 
 of opinion that followed Soane in his career, 
 as closely as the great admiration of those who 
 felt that he was undoubtedly possessed of genius. 
 It must be, therefore, worth while for the student 
 to consider with some attention the theory and 
 
 seen, and are familiar with, in the forms of the 
 buildings around them. 
 
 Even Fergusson argues in favour of a metallic 
 architecture in the ancient world. The bronzes 
 of Pompeii and Heroulaneum, moreover, show 
 the design that was lavished upon candelabra 
 and tripods, a care which may very well have 
 been extended to those features of domestic 
 interiors for which metal could be used. It is also 
 quite possible that woodwork was treated in a 
 metalUc sense, where bronze or iron could not 
 be afforded. 
 
 It is certain that the design of the library of 
 the Soane is derived from hints of this character, 
 
 SiK John Soanb's Hodsb, No. 13, Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 The LiiiKiRY on the Ground Floor Front. 
 
 practice of an architect possessed of so much force 
 of character. 
 
 One source of Soane's ideas seems to have been 
 his own study of the antique mausolea to 
 which Robert Adam had called attention. In the 
 endeavour to determine the true character of the 
 private domestic architecture of the Greeks and 
 Romans, as distinct from that of their temples, 
 it was only natural that reliance should be 
 ! placed upon those scanty remains of antique 
 fresco decorations, that possessed backgrounds 
 of an architectural character. 
 
 The argument may be stated as a proposition 
 that painters do not in fact design, in the archi- 
 tectural sense, but simply recall what they have 
 
 and that there is a deliberate attempt to realise 
 the flying arches, and other features, hinted at, 
 in the backgrounds of antique frescoes. In the 
 miniature loggia of the first-floor front we have a 
 much later attempt to realise some Roman gallery, 
 as it might have existed in an imperial palace, or 
 large villa. Colonnettes of metal are repro- 
 duced in wood, decorated as green bronze, in 
 conjunction with busts resting on metal-hke 
 architraves. Candelabra, medallions and bas- 
 reliefs are brought in as elements in the scheme. 
 The extraordinary complexity of the remains^ 
 of the ViUa of Hadrian, at Tivoli, suffices to 
 show how wide a range of domestic work 
 must have existed in Antiquity. This 
 
34 
 
 particular example, moreover, was probably not 
 considered, by the architects of the period, 
 as muoh more than the extravagance of an 
 imperial amateur. We have, therefore, httle 
 more than a hazy idea of the work of the 
 great architects of the old world of Greece 
 and Kome, in the domestic sphere. It is as 
 though the Vatican had perished, and we had 
 merely St. Peter's as a witness tp the age of 
 Bramante, Peruzzi, Pirro Ligorio and Raphael. 
 
 Sir John Soanb's House, No. 13, Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 The Breakfast Parlour. 
 
 The building of Pitzhanger Manor in 1800-2 
 affords a useful clue to the Hne of development 
 of Soane's domestic interiors. 
 
 Previous to this work he may be said to have 
 worked in an attenuated version of the Adam 
 style. The interiors of No. 18, New Cavendish 
 Street, which he fitted up for the Earl of 
 Hardwicke, are a case in point. It is not certain 
 thatthe fine-drawn ceiUng on the front first-floor 
 drawing room is h^s, but it is very probable. 
 Here we see work of a Wyatt-Adam character. 
 
 In contradistinction to Robert Adam, So^ne 
 was not a unique master in the special field of 
 house-building./ His work is always interesting 
 and fuU of ideas, but there is an architectural 
 parti pris, which hampers the full and free 
 expression of its domestic character. It 
 calls to mind a saying, which may perhaps 
 be traced back to Norman Shaw, or Nesfield, 
 that what the student requires is to 
 ehminate the architecture from his house 
 design. 
 
 Pitzhanger is interesting as an 
 architect's house, a classical viUa 
 essay. Soane was thinking of a 
 " house for an architect in the 
 antique manner." Horace Walpole 
 tells us that he suggested that ' ' the 
 Gallery of Syon should be' fitted 
 up in the manner of an antique 
 columbarium," about the last idea 
 that it excites in Robert Adam's . 
 hands. Soane's largest and most 
 important house was Tyringham, 
 in Bucks. There is a fine reserve 
 about the exterior. It illus- 
 trates what he was intending 
 for the new House of Lords, 
 a design in hand at the same 
 time. 
 
 The hall vestibule was practi- 
 cally one bay of one of the large 
 halls of that design. The centre 
 of the house was sacrificed to a 
 lanterned structure, or " tribune," 
 of the type which Soane realised 
 more efiectively in the Pitt Ceno- 
 taph, at the National Debt Re- 
 demption OfBce, in 1818. The 
 architect was thoroughly pleased 
 with the house, and George Dance 
 both admired it _ and proposed 
 to " steal from it." It certainly 
 had dignity and character, but 
 as an EngUsh home it left a great 
 deal to be desired. 
 Unfortunately Soane did not build his design 
 for Butterton, in Stafiordshire (1816). This is an 
 Adamitic-Greek design, rather suggestive of a 
 medium sized museflm or town hall. The in- 
 teriors, following on his experience with his 
 own house in Lincoln's Inn Fields (1812), 
 would have been, of great interest, as an illus- 
 tration of the further development of his ideas 
 of interior decoration. When Soane built for 
 himself he had always his collections to house 
 and exhibit, and, therefore, it is difficult to 
 
35. 
 
 judge what he might have done, when free 
 of such considerations. 
 
 The circumstances of the time must be re- 
 called. Even the painter Lawrence filled his 
 rooms with casts of statues and Greek architec- 
 tural details. In 1830 Barry puts a cast of the 
 ■Parthenon Frieze round one of the interiors of 
 ,the Travellers' Club, and in the Reform (1837) 
 there is a reUc of the same idea in the smoking 
 room. The younger architect was emancipating 
 himself, and the interiors of the Reform Club 
 as a whole marked a new departure. 
 
 Decimus Burton, in Grove House, makes his 
 circular hall Uke the lantern of Demosthenes 
 turned insid&out. If this is recalled as an outline 
 
 The most symptomatic room is the front 
 parlour, which contains the germ of the famous 
 breakfast parlour of the Soane Museum. The 
 differences, however, are -remarkable. In the 
 later work, apart from the structural novelty of 
 the lighting, by which the earlier dome - vault 
 becomes a canopy with two sides clear of the 
 vails, the elimination of the caryatid element 
 of the earlier design shows a much greater 
 appreciation of domestic character. 
 
 The Pitzhanger parlour had a marble effect, 
 while that of the Soane is suggestive of wood. 
 Taken as a whole, the tendency of his design is 
 in the direction of an omission of all projecting 
 features. Everything becomes flush, and all 
 
 Bank OF England. 
 The first part built 1792-6. 
 
 Sir John Soanb, R.A., Architect. 
 Eastern end of fa(;ade to Threadneedle Street. 
 
 sketch of the ideas of the time, the merit, of 
 Soane's interiors in his own house in Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields will be better appreciated. 
 
 Pitzhanger illustrates in its interior how far 
 Soane had lost touch with the Adam scheme of 
 decoration, because, although he refers to the two 
 rooms there by his master, Dance; which he was 
 preserving, as " exquisite," he makes no a,ttempt 
 to follow the same style. Admittedly the main 
 feature of the exterior recalls his admiration 
 of the Adam centre-piece of the south front of 
 Kedleston, but his own new interiors were purely 
 Soanic. 
 
 As compared with. No. 13, Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields, of ten years later, the Pitzhanger interiors 
 exhibit too much of the mausoleum character. 
 
 the usual details of skirting, chair rail, archi- 
 trave, and cornice are boldly dispensed with. 
 Even the door panels are made flush, and in- 
 lays, or reed flutings, replace the customary 
 sunk and moulded surfaces. 
 
 A Uttle later Soane was attracted by the^ 
 possibiUties of mirror glass for the reduction of 
 shadows, and the illumination of blank surfaces. 
 I do not think that his idea was at all that, which 
 later on became such an abuse, the endeavour 
 to multiply interiors by the use of large sheets 
 of the reflecting surface of mirror glass. Where 
 a comparatively long piece of unbroken mirror 
 is used, over the beokcases on the west wall of 
 the library, a special effect was arrived at, that 
 of giving clearance to the flying arches, and of 
 
36 
 
 repeating the horizontal plane of the ceiling 
 with its compartments. It is a special case, 
 which is justified by its surroundings and un- 
 deniable effectiveness. Soane makes a further 
 use of spherical mirrors in order to focus certain 
 interior views. These are decoratively distri- 
 buted in panels forming part of the internal 
 design. — 
 
 Splayed jambs to windows, or archways, are 
 also sometimes panelled with mirrors, with a 
 view to the better distribution of the light. 
 When Soane calls attention to the compartments 
 of the ceiling of his house, he connects them in 
 
 Bank of E.vgland. Sir John Soane, E A , Architect. 
 East Half of Back Elevation. 
 
 idea with the main lines of the floor construc- 
 tion above. This shows that he wished to avail 
 himself of the depth provided by the old system 
 of girder-beams, binders, and double floor and 
 ceiling joists. Inside this framework he devises 
 panels with spherical surfaces, an outcome of his 
 exceptional knowledge of domical and vaulting 
 problems. 
 
 From a curious memorandum, preserved by 
 one of his travelling companions, it would 
 appear that such problems had been thoroughly 
 explored in those early days. 
 
 The type of cross vault, that is seen at Pitz- 
 hanger and in the Soano Museum, is one that 
 occurs in Southern Italy. It is a method of 
 
 eliminating the groin by the use of a flat sur- 
 face, forming, as it were, a gusset. There are 
 thus two intersections instead of one. I believe 
 that this system, which I have seen in process 
 of building on the eastern coast of South Italy, 
 arose to a large extent from the need of dispensing 
 with centering, as the masons seem able to 
 carry out these vaults on practically a self-sup- 
 porting basis. Soane, at the. Bank, had already 
 displayed great ingenuity in constructing his 
 segmental and other vaults, and domes, by 
 means of hollow pots. 
 Where he uses a flat oeiUng he often dispenses 
 with all but the shallowest 
 of sinkings, and he relies on 
 lines of reeds, or strings of 
 single beads, rather too'sug- 
 gestive of pUls. 
 
 Another form of a more 
 dubious character is the 
 Soanic pendant, a kind of 
 frieze of dependent drops, 
 like reversed cones, con- 
 cave in outline. Probably 
 this arose out of an attempt 
 to assimilate features of a 
 Tudor and Elizabethan 
 character. 
 
 If justification for these 
 divergencies is needed, it 
 may be found in the pro- 
 position that constructional 
 features in architecture 
 tend to pass into forms of 
 decoration, and that the 
 use of such features is 
 governed only by the 
 artistic instinct of the 
 g,rchiteot. 
 
 The attempt to apply 
 the logic of ethics has 
 always involved contradictions of theory and 
 practice, visible enough to all but the convinced 
 partisan. Whatever the theory that may be put 
 forth as an infallible guide in architecture and 
 decoration, it is surely obvious that it must be 
 apphcable to aU styles alike, and be true of the 
 most ancient, as well as the most modern master- 
 pieces. 
 
 When Soane deals with coloui? in internal de- 
 coration he proceeds, on lines quite opposed to 
 those of Robert Adam. In the interiors of his 
 own house he depends on the natural colours 
 of the wood and marble, either actual or in 
 paint, with the reUef derived from metals, 
 and metallic colours, like bronze. He then 
 
n 
 
 obtains emphasis by masses or bands of bright 
 positive colours, i.e., bright Venetian, or 
 Pompeiian, reds, and yellows, primrose, or 
 golden, in hue. 
 
 Although Soane uses polished bfass, in con- 
 nection with woodwork of mahogany inlaid 
 with ebony, as in cappings and inserted oolon- 
 nettes, he does not seem to have indulged in 
 gilding, which is remarkable, when we remember 
 the common form of the white and gold interiors 
 of his own period. 
 
 In the course of time the original colours of the 
 drawing rooms aiid the staircase at the Soane 
 have been lost sight of, and a pale green has 
 been introduced with an effect quite un-Soanic. 
 
 Probably the interior of the museum itself was 
 in stone colour, because here Soane was relying 
 on the vivid hues of the stained glass in his 
 lanterns. Red, purple, blue, and varying shades 
 of yellow, were employed with a double motive, 
 firstly, to modify the light, in which the marbles, 
 and casts were seen, and, secondly, to obtain 
 flashes and local spots of vivid colour, through 
 the rays of light passing through his coloured 
 margins. The large use that Soane makes of 
 top lighting, preferably through lanterns, enabled 
 him to follow out these ideas, because the powerful 
 efiect of a top light removed any fear of obscurity. 
 
 In fact, there is now an excess of light, resulting 
 in a detrimental glare, where his lanterns have 
 been reglazed at any later time with clear glass. 
 
 Soane's use of coloured glass was certainly 
 W ' novel at the time, because gibes were frequently 
 made at the " stained glass dome " in his own 
 house, and, at the new Law Courts (1824) he was 
 advised by his friends to take out the coloured 
 g(ass, which he had put in, in view of the ridicule 
 that would be excited by its novelty. 
 
 In Soane's bands of brightly coloured glass, 
 roundels or guilloches, etc., were etched out in 
 white, probably by an acid, and then shaded, with 
 a scratched high Ught. Unaltered houses of his 
 period, and up to say 1840, will often be found 
 with these margins of coloured glass, before the 
 general revival of leaded glass. There is one 
 important distinction in Soane's use of yellow 
 glass to diffuse an effect of sunlight, which arises 
 from the fact that some of the glass is white, 
 while the colours have a considerable range in 
 tints from light to dark. I do not think this was 
 merely an inequality of manufacture in the glass, 
 but that it was deliberate on his part, and the 
 resulting effect is quite different to that produced 
 by a needless uniformity of tone, as may be 
 seen in the mausoleum at Dulwich, which must 
 surely have been reglazed at some later time. 
 
 It" would not appear that in respect of the 
 painter's art, Soane drew any marked distinction 
 between easel pictures, and paintings deliber- 
 ately" decorative. The " History " School of 
 the period, that of West, Northcote, Hilton and 
 Haydon,^ was regarded at the time as a British 
 achievement, which it was a patriotic duty to 
 patronise and support. If Soane's earnest desire, 
 to have placed two paintings of this character 
 in large panels on the walls of his Soala Regia 
 had been fulfilled, it is to be feared that the 
 decorative result would have been small, while 
 as pictures they would have been no better than 
 the canvases of DurnOi Howard, and Jones now 
 in the Soane. 
 
 It is probable that Soane, during his time in 
 Rome and Italy, was too exclusively devoted to an 
 absorbing study of architecture, and architec- 
 tural design, to be able at a later period of his 
 life to free himself from the current ideas of his 
 ovvn day. Although a personal friend of Turner, 
 his choice of the three works by that master, 
 now in the museum, shows no instinctive grasp 
 of the real tendency of that great painter's 
 revolution in art. It is also remarkable that 
 Gainsborough, David Cox, and Constable are 
 not represented at aU in the Soane. 
 
 In the ceiling of the Soane library and dining 
 room, the paintings by Henry Howard, R.A., 
 inserted as late as 1834, are decoratively less 
 effective than the purely architectural panels, 
 and the ceilings of the two drawing rooms above 
 would gain little by painting. The earlier ceiling 
 of 1792, at No. 12, had a trellis-painted decora- 
 tion, but Soane did not repeat the experiment. 
 
 The Privy Council Chamber ceiling (1824) 
 shows no hint of any such decoration. 
 
 It might even be argued that Soane in his 
 pictorial decorative essays was merely acting 
 under the impression produced by Haydon's 
 active campaign, which eventually led up to 
 the Westminster Cartoon Competition, and its 
 not very fortunate outcome, the frescoes of the 
 new Houses of Parliament. 
 
 There were considerable limitations in Soane's 
 theoretical endeavour to uiiite sculpture with 
 architecture. In the most typical Soanio work 
 sculpture plays a very minor part, if not entirely 
 absent. One or two rather wild designs on paper 
 show an excess of caryatid figures, that would 
 have been better entirely omitted. At his best, 
 when lie was employing Banks, the sculpture 
 provided at the Bank is only a pair of- roundels, 
 of the type used in the Roman triumphal arches, / 
 and some suggested figures on the skyline, as\/ 
 used by Palladio. 
 
38 
 
 Some cherubs in pendentives, or in the dies of 
 pedestals, are similarly limited examples of its 
 use. He had a passing idea of inserting a series 
 of bust- like heads, between the trusses of the large 
 Italian- cornice of the State Paper Office, but 
 was fortunately persuaded to omit them.' 
 As good an instance, as any, of Soane's 
 use of sculpture were the caryatid figures on 
 the staircase of the Marquess of Buckingham's 
 house, in Pall Mall, (now pulled down). 
 
 ..T^ ^ -.-, - ~,f^b-*^' -^ 
 
 Bank op England. Sir John Soanb, E.A., 
 Angle to Lothbuhy and Princes Street. 
 
 At the same time Soane most certainly appre- 
 ciated Flaxman, and secured some ol his best ' 
 Models. He also collected Wedgwoods by Tassie 
 and Webber. Thanks to him also we have the 
 four fine eagle panels from Carlton Palace, the 
 work of his former chief, Henry Holland, junr. 
 It might very plausibly be argued that Soane's 
 most interesting and characteristic work is 
 purely architectural, and dispenses with both 
 painting and sculpture, for instance, the Tivoli 
 Corner of the Bank, the Loggia of the Governor's 
 Court, the Vestibule Entrance from Prince's 
 
 Street; and the fajade of his own house. In the 
 last instance the two isolated figures are not 
 essentials of the design. 
 
 Soane's attitude to the decorative arts was 
 inconsistent". He actually apologises for Robert 
 Adam's attention to decorative details, on the 
 ground that WilUam Kent had done the same ! 
 This false attitude may be regarded as an out- 
 come of Reynolds's "high art" doctrines, and 
 the absurd isolation of " History " painting, as 
 
 a supreme emanation of art. 
 
 It is allied to Chantrey's 
 later neglect of detail, as of 
 something opposed ,to the 
 purity and grandeur of classic 
 sculpture, etc. The fact is, of 
 course, that very erroneous 
 views prevailed as to the 
 practice and theory of the 
 Greeks. Even Flaxman in 
 his lectures displays a 
 curiously limited apprecia- 
 tion of the art of the Early 
 Renaissance period, and an 
 absolute indifference to its 
 later developments. 
 
 The touch that Robert 
 Adam alone had established 
 with these schools disap- 
 peared in the course of the 
 Greek Revival. Not until 
 the appearance of Alfred 
 Stevens did the decorative 
 aspect of sculpture, in rela- 
 tion to architecture, obtain a 
 fresh recognition in England. 
 The unique aspect of Soane'sc 
 work, its peculiar harmony in 
 itself, and freedom from vul- 
 garity, can best be appre- 
 ciated perhaps by a compari- 
 son with such contemporary 
 work as the long gallery at 
 York House (now the London 
 Museum), and at Apsley House, the Waterloo 
 Gallery, all interiors by James Wyatt's sons. 
 The Buckingham Palace interiors, also, the work 
 of John Nash (1827), illustrate the poverty- 
 stricken condition of the contemporary design 
 of interiors, and the steep descent from the 
 high level of the Adam period. 
 
 Some interior work by Decimus Burton is 
 alone comparable with Soane's, until we come 
 to the work of Barry and Cockerell. In the case 
 of the latter his early work at the Bank compares 
 unfavourably with that of Soane. C. H. Tatham 
 
 Architect. 
 (1805-8.) 
 
19 
 
 writes in 1833 to Soane of some early work, 
 probably at the Hank, by young Cockerel!, as 
 to the identification of which I am uncertain : — 
 " Exteriore cattivo 1 Interiore peggio !" 
 
 The interior of the Hanover Chapel in Regent 
 Street (now pulled down) was much below the 
 exterior in refinement and effectiveness. 
 
 The old Debtors' Court in Portugal Street was 
 a good instance of Soane's power of producing 
 a fine interior out of very simple constructive 
 elements. From the drawings and photographs,- 
 which are all that remain, it ia olearthat this 
 square interior, with four large semi-circular 
 arches, carrying a flat ceiling, possessed a great 
 deal of character. There was also a Idtchen 
 under the state room added to Freeinasons' Hall, 
 which appears to have had a sinplar effective- 
 ness. It might have been anticipated that the 
 National Church Building Movement of 1818 
 would have produced something of the effect 
 of the earlier essay, in the reigns of Queen Anne 
 and George I. 
 
 Soane, who was consulted in the company of 
 Nash and Smirke, did his best to secure adequate 
 results, hut his Report, urging an allowance 
 of £30,000 for the larger churches, was fatally 
 disregarded for an absolute limit of £20,000. 
 Soane's best design for Marylebone was conse- 
 quently shut out, , and from the two or three 
 examples, which he did carry out, it is only too 
 evident that he had lost any vital interest in 
 the matter. 
 
 The rejected design, preserved in a good model, 
 is one of very great interest. It is an arcuated 
 structure with a continuous vault having 
 openings that serve the purpose of a clerestory. 
 The tall moulded round arches and piers have 
 no imposts, and the subordinate gallery is well 
 contrived, without any break in the main lines 
 of the interior. A bold segment arch of the 
 full width of the church marks off the chancel. 
 The whole structure has more sympathy with 
 the early Romanesque, than with any phase of 
 the succeeding Gothic. It was an experimental 
 design that deserved to he executed, and might 
 have proved fruitful. Certainly it was far in 
 advance of the generality of the churches built 
 out of the million grant. 
 
 In conclusion, it may be pointed out that this 
 brief survey, in touching on the Architecture 
 and Decoration of Robert Adam and John Soane, 
 has extended over three-quarters of a oenturj'. 
 
 At the outset Palladianism was in the ascend- 
 ant, challenged only by French and Chinese 
 tendencies, as well as by the opening buds of 
 the coming Gothic, and Greek, Revivals. At 
 
 the close of the period all that was left of 
 Palladian tradition was in process of being 
 transformed by the Astylar Italian, introduced 
 by Sir Charles Barry, who was breaking away f 
 from his early adherence to Grecian Revivalism. | - 
 
 Medisevalism had grown into a formidable ' 
 movement, and the generation immediately 
 following upon Soane's death in 1837, was to 
 witness both the high-water mark and the ebb 
 of that movement. 
 
 The veteran of eighty- four was perhaps the \ 
 
 last of those who could put in any claim to the 
 friendship of Robert Adam, and with a prophetic 
 instinct he had secured the great possession 
 of the remaining original drawings of the master, 
 at a time when Robert Adam's work and repu- 
 tation were under a deep, if passing, cloud. 
 
 As Sir John Soane's pupils died off appreciation 
 of what he had achieved declined. His great 
 collections were valued for other things than 
 those upon which his own heart had been set. 
 His house came to be regarded as the expression 
 of an eccentric, a monument of personal vanity, 
 and his work as anything but a serious contribu- 
 tion to. architectural thought. 
 
 The destruction of Soane's buildings has been 
 very extensive, and it is fortunate that his tree 
 was too deeply planted to be entirely rooted up. 
 
 It is singular that one of the most discerning 
 tributes to his work «hould have come from 
 George Wightwiok, temporarily in his employ as 
 a private secretary, who left him in a rage after 
 some three months' service in 1824. ' This 
 personal contact, however, mellowed by the 
 experience of professional life on his own account, 
 and by the passage of time, left a deep im- 
 pression on the younger man, which is finely 
 expressed in his " Palace of Architecture." 
 
 Probably few to-day would care to assail the 
 position of Robert Adam, as a revolutionary 
 artist whose work has left a permanent trace 
 in the history of Architecture. 
 
 Sir John Soane's contribution to architectural 
 thought may be challenged, and only the future 
 can show the quality of the wheat as distinct f rorn 
 the tares, which are so easily detected and 
 dwelt upon. That there is a continuous thread ' 
 running through the whole of architectural 
 history seems self-evident. Each generation 
 essays its own problems in a different spirit, 
 but the_ tradition is a,lways present, and the 
 task of assigning relative values to the individual 
 contributors is not one to be lightly essayed. 
 
 It is sufficient to claim for Soane the possession 
 of original ideas and a power of expression, which v^ 
 makes his buildings so distinctively his own. 
 
40 
 
 Invited to address you here in a House, erected 
 for your Society by Robert and James Adam in 
 1772-4, I have had the privilege of speaking 
 before a Society, which was nominated by Sir- 
 John Soane himself as an elector of a Eepresenta- 
 tive Trustee of the Sir John Soane Museum, 
 being myself its Curator. 
 
 It only remains for me to thank you most sin- 
 cerely for the privilege, and to expi?ess my sense of 
 the kindness of the attention which has been given 
 
 to my subject. 
 
 Epilogue. 
 
 On the occasion of the third Lecture, in view 
 of certain rumours in the Press, the foregoing 
 was not delivered as printed, as it was thought 
 that the minds of the audience would be 
 occupied with the Bank. Occasion was, there- 
 fore, taken to point out the value and importance 
 in the history of English Architecture of Sir 
 John Soane's masterpiece. As, however, an 
 account, fully illustrated, will, it is hoped, 
 shortly be given of this and others of his build- 
 ings, in a separate " Publication of the Sir John 
 Soane Museum,'' it would be superfluous to 
 print here what was actually said on the occa- 
 sion of the third Lecture. Three special photo- 
 graphs which were taken to make slides for 
 this -lecture are, however, reproduced. The 
 first of these shows the earliest part (1794-6) of 
 Soane's rebuilding of the Bank, this right-hand 
 wing being subsequently repeated in 1823, 
 when the left-hand wing of the Bank was 
 
 rebuilt, as the later portion of the work. The 
 centre block, not shown, is a recasing of the 
 original Bank building, of which Sampson was 
 the architect. The second illustration shows 
 the first half of the North, or back fagade, of 
 the Bank. As, owing to the street improve- 
 ments of 1800, it became necessary to double 
 this frontage, Soane desired to build a great 
 hexastyle portico, as the centre feature of this 
 newly- extended fa9ade. The necessary projec- 
 tion into the street being, however, . refused, 
 Soane was obliged to content himself with the 
 narrow-bay design, seen on the right-hand side 
 of the photograph, which as a centre he always 
 felt was inadequate. The third, photograph 
 shows the masterly angle feature of the north- 
 west corner of the Bank at the junction of the 
 two streets; This unaltered work gives the full 
 effect of Soane's unique design, and it has 
 always been regarded as his inasterpiece. The 
 design is given in relief on the reverse side of 
 the gold medal presented to him in 1834 by the 
 arohiteots of England. 
 
 [The nine illustrations of Syon House 
 are from photographs by F. E. Yerbury, Esq. 
 The blocks are kindly lent by the Editor of 
 the Architectural Association Journal. The 
 illustrations of Sir John Soane's work and the 
 three tailpieces are from blocks kindly lent by 
 the Trustees of Sir John Soane's Museum, the 
 other three belong to the Society. Copyright 
 reserved.] 
 
 The Tomb of Sib Joun Soane in Old St. 
 Churohyaed. 
 
 Pance&s 
 
Cornell University Library 
 NA 996.B64 
 Cantor lectures on the arctiitecture and 
 
 3 1924 015 677 754 
 
 
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