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Compte rendu par Paul Ranogajec Nombre de mots : 1437 mots Publié en ligne le 2020-10-12 Citation: Histara les comptes rendus (ISSN 2100-0700). Lien: http://histara.sorbonne.fr/cr.php?cr=3095 Lien pour commander ce livre Frances Sands’ meticulous research in the extraordinary collection of over 8,000 office drawings from Robert and James Adam held at the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London has resulted in an extraordinary online archive (http://bit.ly/2udSY3v) of inestimable value to scholars in architectural history, decorative arts, and eighteenth-century design. Organized by project, attributed, and contextualized, this treasure trove of architectural and decorative drawing—with another 1,000 or so drawings in the museum’s Adam Brothers’ Grand Tours collection—should prove to be fodder for wide-ranging and critical work on the architecture of the Adam brothers. Dating between 1758 and 1794, the Adam drawings span a large range of building types, patrons, and locations. Robert Adam’s London extracts 48 of the Adam brothers’ projects for the city, illustrated with 104 images. Yet this is but a small fraction of the 1,700 drawings related to the Adam brothers’ London projects. Produced to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Soane Museum (30 November 2016 to 11 March 2017), the book provides a tantalizing glimpse of the archive’s breadth [1].
The brief introduction touches on a number of issues spanning from the well-known to the sorely understudied in literature on the Adam brothers. For instance, Sands describes the brothers as being “dictatorial over design” and allowing only schemes to be developed “for which they ultimately took credit.” They ran a large office of draughtsmen but did not, it seems, want to give much credit to those employees. In this, they were very modern employers. Modern, too, was their approach to gaining clients. As Sands notes, Robert’s publication of drawings of the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s Palace at Split was undertaken “to propel him to celebrity.” The brothers also sold prints of their designs and used drawings, standardized and completed to a house style, to set themselves apart from their competition. The drawings, in addition to documenting individual projects, provide a rich set of evidence to further explore the marketing of architectural expertise in the late eighteenth century. The breadth of the Soane archive of Adam drawings suggests there are many opportunities for further research into their practice in relation to the modern, professional standards and conduct they themselves were helping to formulate and implement.
The book’s introduction aims to provide a broad introduction to the Adam brothers and the professional and urban contexts of the projects detailed in the book. Unfortunately, the very brief length of the introduction means it does not go very far in doing so. Specialists will not find anything surprising here—there is no critical perspective brought to bear on the architects and their work—and the broader audience that encounters this book will need to seek out earlier publications for a fuller understanding of the brothers and their architecture. The introduction offers, in very broad strokes, some comments on patronage, urban development, and other contextual circumstances of the London scene in which the Adam brothers made their mark. While rich detail on aspects of these issues is found in the individual project descriptions throughout the book, there was a missed opportunity to make the introduction an integral part of the text. As it stands, readers can skip it without missing anything important.
Also noted but passed over too quickly in the introduction and throughout the volume are a cluster of questions around class, status, urban style fads, and many issues in social history. A brief section (on page 7) raises these complex questions in relation to the Adams’ townhouse projects in London. Sands notes that the grandest of these were “elaborate conduits for social parade” and provided the image of “dynastic stability” in town for owners whose lavish country houses were less conspicuous because less visited. At the same time, however, the narrow range of the Adam style—it is immediately recognizable due to a relatively small set of ornamental motifs, large-scale design patterns, and dispositions of the classical orders—seems to have imparted less a sense of dynastic stability than one of urban decorum based on social class and custom. Recent work on Adam country houses, in particular, has started to explore these questions, but the office’s urban work, especially in projects for the more prosperous of London’s bourgeoisie, is ripe for deeper analysis along these lines.
The volume is laid out clearly and the illustrated drawings show the range of the Adam brothers’ production. It is quite unclear, however, why the title should call out Robert and not both brothers—or the office as a whole. Given that Sands writes about Robert and James throughout, and that the great bulk of drawings are attributed to the Adam office rather than to a particular individual, there seems to be little justification—except name recognition and book marketability—to promote Robert ahead of his brother or their office. Of course, this focus on a single famous designer conforms to a long-standing bias in architectural history privileging the work of purportedly single-author designers and dominating personalities. But to have adopted this biographical, great-man approach here signals a missed opportunity given that the vast majority of works discussed are not attributed to Robert[2]. Partnership and division of labor defined Adam office practice much more than is acknowledged here. London in the late eighteenth century might better be called “Adam Office London.” It may be objected that this is asking too much of an abbreviated collection catalogue, but questions of authorship and office collaboration arise conspicuously as one reads the generic drawing attributions one after another.
As a catalogue, the book is highly selective. To get a sense of the distinction between Sands’ book and the Soane Museum’s online catalogue, I compared the book and website entries of five projects. As a representative sample, I simply examined every ninth project listed on the book’s contents page, resulting in comparisons of the following projects: 152 Aldersgate Street; Chandos House, Queen Anne Street; 30 Curzon Street; the Deputy Ranger’s Lodge, Green Park; and 20 St James’s Square. In three cases, the text of the book’s catalogue entry is very similar to the text on the website, both in length and wording. The website, however, provides further details about each drawing, including a brief description, notations about medium, dimensions, and watermarks, and literature references. Additionally, the website groups all of the drawings together by project, whereas the book illustrates—with the exception of the fifth project, one of the Adams’s most famous townhouses on St James’s Square—only one or two drawings. In two cases—that of the Deputy Ranger’s Lodge and 20 St James’s Square—records for the project appear to be missing or incomplete on the website[3].
As a scholarly resource, there is almost no additional information or contextual perspective in the book beyond what is given on the collection website. Serious researchers of the Adam office and of eighteenth-century London architecture will want to consult the online catalogue exclusively. The book, by contrast, provides a very broad overview of Adam interventions in London and fills a surprising gap in printed publications on Adam work in the city. While it makes an attractive and affordable addition to non-specialist libraries, it does not suffice for research needs.
[1] The publisher provided for review only a digital pdf file of the catalogue. I am unable, therefore, to comment on the book’s production quality. [2] Indeed, only three of the 104 illustrations are drawings credited to Robert [3] One item is returned on a search for “Deputy Ranger’s Lodge”—a drawing of a gatehouse (reference number SM Adam volume 51/61)—but it is not connected to the Robert and James Adam office drawings collection. A search for “20 St James’s Square” returns a number of records, but only one clearly labeled in relation to house number 20 (reference number SM Adam volume 53/2): a drawing of ornamental details possibly for a fireplace or interior frieze. In the book, Sands notes there are “over 80” Adam drawings at the Soane Museum for the project. Searching by the reference numbers given for the five drawings of 20 St James’s Square illustrated in the book returns a matching record in only three cases (searches for “SM Adam volumes 40/66-67,” figure 100 in the book, and “SM Adam volume 23/10,” figure 101, do not return correct records). Furthermore, none of those three records are connected back to the Robert and James Adam office drawings collection. These technical issues were documented at the time of writing in January 2020.
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Éditeurs : Lorenz E. Baumer, Université de Genève ; Jan Blanc, Université de Genève ; Christian Heck, Université Lille III ; François Queyrel, École pratique des Hautes Études, Paris |
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