Robert Adam

"This book, a visual survey of much of Adam's work, provides ample material for a critical appraisal of the development of Adam as architect and designer."--Book jacket.

This addition to the 'New Classicists' series features the work of Robert Adam Architects Ltd, one of the leading practitioners of of traditional design in the UK. The practice manages a broad portfolio of work including house conversions and additions.

One of the most celebrated books in architectural history, this volume consists of 106 illustrated plates that influenced generations of British and American architectural and furniture designs.

The iconic eighteenth-century architect Robert Adam was based in London for more than half of his life and made more designs for this one city than anywhere else in the world. This book reviews a wide variety of his designs for London, highlighting lesser-known buildings as well as familiar ones.

Dr Johnson said that he would walk to the ends of the earth to save Beauclerk. Other people who claimed to be his friends rejoiced at his early death. How did the beautiful youth of Francis Coates’ 1756 portrait become a man whose greatest claim to fame was causing an infestation of lice at Blenheim Palace through lack of personal hygiene? A great-grandson of Charles II and Nell Gwyn, he lived a privileged life thanks to fortuitously inherited wealth. He employed Robert Adam to build him a house at Muswell Hill which has almost completely disappeared from the records of Adam’s work due to a dispute about the bill. He was one of the leading book-collectors of the time, with a library of 30,000 volumes whose sale after his death was a major literary event. He also used his wealth to indulge interests in science and astronomy and a passion for gambling. As a result, he ran through his inheritance as quickly as he could sell it, falling into ever-increasing debt as his lawyer grew richer. Beauclerk knew all the leading figures of the British and French Enlightenments. He was a friend of Johnson, Adam Smith, David Hume, Horace Walpole, Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Wilkes and David Garrick. He met Rousseau and Voltaire, and immersed himself in French salon culture. He could charm people when he chose to, but did not always try. Recently he has been overshadowed by his wife, Lady Di (née Spencer), whose life by Carola Hicks (Improper Pursuits, 2001) has made her artistic talent and unconventional life well-known. The story of their adultery and marriage has not previously been told from Beauclerk’s point of view, and many other inaccuracies have crept into authoritative works such as the ODNB; he is regularly and unfairly dismissed as a bad husband. This biography shows that he was much more than the close associate of Johnson known from the pages of Boswell: a man of widely varied interests, from the Grand Tour to the contemporary theatre, who lived Enlightenment life to the full in a way which would not have been possible a generation earlier or later. Based on research in unpublished letters, legal documents and financial records, including some concerning the Adam house, as well as published diaries, letters and memoirs, it shows that he may have left no enduring legacy of his many talents, as even his friends admitted, but he made the most of all the opportunities available and lived a fascinating life which illuminates every aspect of Georgian elite society, from auctions to zoology, from care of one’s wig to building an observatory, and from mishaps in Venice to sea-therapy in Brighton.

During the second half of the eighteenth century British architecture moved away from the dominant school of classicism in favour of a more creative freedom of expression. At the forefront of this change were architect brothers Robert and James Adam. Kondo’s work places them within the context of eighteenth-century intellectual thought.

This volume is a unique compendium of the works of Robert and James Adam, both built and unbuilt. It includes 900 illustrations. The Complete Works of Robert and James Adam is reprinted here in its entirety, updated and corrected. This title covers every one of the 230 or so built works, including 12 that have been recently discovered. It is complemented by a completely new title, Unbuilt Adam. This mentions all the brothers' important unbuilt projects, and it discusses and illustrates 130 of them. This volume gives an exceptionally thorough review of the brothers' designs. From public buildings to country houses, and monuments to ceilings, it is well informed and erudite. It provides a mine of information for both the expert and the general reader, and it uses the works covered to give an understanding of the Adam manner.

Robert Adam is perhaps the best known of all British architects, the only one whose name denotes both a style and an era. The new decorative language he introduced at Kedleston and Syon around 1760 put him at the forefront of dynamic changes taking place in 18th-century British architecture. His later claim that his practice with his brother James had effected 'a kind of revolution' in design was no idle boast. Their style dominated the later Georgian period and their influence was widespread, not only in Western Europe but in Russia and North America. But for such a well-known figure, much of Robert Adam's art still remains poorly understood. This new study, based on papers given at a Georgian Group symposium in 2015, looks afresh at many aspects of the Adam brothers' oeuvre, such as interior planning, their use of colour, the influence of classical sources, their involvement in the art market, town planning and building speculation, and Robert Adam's late picturesque drawings and castle designs - all within the context of the Adam family background and their personal and working relationships. The Scottish architecture of Robert and James's older brother, John, is also assessed. There are essays by established Adam experts as well as contributions from a younger generation of historians and postdoctoral scholars, one of the book's aims being to stimulate further research on the Adams' contribution to British architecture, art and design.