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'Worthy of Eve Before the Fall': Representations of Palmyra In ‘Worthy of Eve before the Fall’: Representations of Palmyra in Eighteenth Century Britain ELISABETH GRASS ‘The Ruins of Palmyra’ (1753) was the first of a new genre of architectural publication which appeared in the mid-eighteenth century, applying empirical taxonomy to the buildings of the ancient world. It promulgated the architecture of Roman Palmyra in modern Europe and was instrumental in the development of British Neo- Classicism. This essay considers two Palmyra-inspired artefacts: Gavin Hamilton’s ‘James Dawkins and Robert Wood Discovering the Ruins of Palmyra’ (1758) and Robert Adam’s ceiling to the drawing room at Osterley Park, Middlesex (c. 1763). Contemporary mimetic responses to ‘The Ruins’, these artefacts are recognised as masterpieces of their respective makers and seminal to the narrative of Neo-Classicism, but they have seldom been assessed as private commissions for private individuals. This essay suggests that they offer an insight into architectural trends, self-fashioning agendas and spheres of influence, and provide a unique prism through which to view eighteenth century connoisseurship. Palmyra’s influence on western art and design is celebrated in its qualification as a UNESCO World Heritage site.1 This influence can be traced to the mid-eighteenth century, when James Dawkins and Robert Wood’s seminal publication The Ruins of Palmyra otherwise Tedmor in the Desart (1753) brought the ‘magnificence of Palmyra’ to Europe through descriptive prose and detailed schematic plates.2 The Ruins established a new genre of architectural publication, the methodology of which would ‘completely transform the study of Greek antiquities’.3 The empirical methodology applied first to Palmyra had a profound influence on Britain’s architectural landscape; the book was a major catalyst for British Neo- Classicism, by which connoisseurs rejected Palladian and Vitruvian models in favour of empirical studies in the Greco-Roman world.4 The recent destruction of Palmyra’s monuments has reinforced the importance of its artistic legacy. This essay began as an attempt to outline Palmyra’s aesthetic influence in Britain by concentrating on two artefacts inspired by and contemporary to The Ruins: Robert Adam’s Palmyra ceiling in the Drawing Room at Osterley Park, Middlesex (c. 1763) and Gavin Hamilton’s monumental canvas Dawkins and Wood Discovering the Ruins of Palmyra (1758). As both of these artefacts copy material from The Ruins, they offered what seemed like a profitable opportunity for tracing their indebtedness to the book, and thence to the site. In 1 ‘Criterion (ii): Recognition of the splendour of the ruins of Palmyra by travellers in the 17th and 18th centuries contributed greatly to the subsequent revival of classical architectural styles and urban design in the West’, see: ‘Site of Palmyra’, UNESCO <http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/23> [16 Jan. 2016]. 2 The Ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor, in the Desart (London, 1753), p. [4]. 3 J. Mordant Crook, The Greek Revival: Neo-Classical Attitudes in British Architecture 1760-1870 (London, 1972), p. 92. 4 For a brief outline of the development of Neo-Classicism, see Mordant Crook, pp. 69-76. 46 practice, close study of the artefacts suggested that they revealed as much about the people who commissioned and created them as about their Neo-Classical context. The project quickly evolved into a study of these individuals through the works they commissioned, and suggests that Palmyra motifs might illuminate something of the mid-eighteenth century gentleman’s self-fashioning agenda. Indeed, it recasts these Palmyra artefacts as tools of the upwardly mobile nouveau riche who sought to engender gravitas through the Classical past. Horace Walpole was outspoken in his approbation for The Ruins of Palmyra, describing it as ‘a noble book’, and eventually dedicating his own Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762) to its brilliance.5 He would be similarly moved a decade later by Sir Robert Child’s newly remodelled Osterley Park, in particular the drawing room which he described as ‘worthy of Eve before the fall’.6 This Edenic splendour was derived from Robert Adam’s Palmyra Ceiling, lately called the ‘most important single work inspired directly by The Ruins’ (Figure. 1).7 Figure. 1. Robert Adam, ‘Palmyra ceiling’, Osterley Park, Middlesex (c. 1763) © Elisabeth Grass, with the kind permission of the National Trust. There are some twenty Palmyra ceilings recorded in British country houses and follies of the eighteenth century.8 Like Adam’s at Osterley, almost all of these are copied from the South 5 The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis, 48 vols (New Haven, 1937-1983), vol. 35, p. 160 (19 Dec. 1753); Horace Wapole, Anecdotes of Painting in England (Twickenham, 1762), p. xiii. 6 Walpole’s Correspondence, vol. 32, p. 125 (21 June 1773). 7 Iain Browning, Palmyra (London, 1979), p. 93. 8 See Browning, pp. 91-94, and Richard Hewlings, ‘A Palmyra Ceiling in Lincoln’, Architectural History, 31 (1988), 166-170 47 Adyton ceiling of the Temple of Bel as recorded in plate XIX of The Ruins (Figure. 2). Broadly Hellenistic, Palmyra’s architecture spoke the language of the Classical Orders through a ‘virile local tradition’ of the Near East.9 Roman provincial success was based in part on its concatenation of existing deities and architectural styles with the imported Augustan models, and Plate XIX distils Palmyra’s hybridity particularly well. It is an appealing combination of exotic and controlled Classicism. Figure. 2. Plate XIX, The Ruins of Palmyra (London,1753), © The British Library Board, 744.f.16 (XIX). The Osterley Palmyra ceiling is rightfully considered a masterpiece, although it deviates more from the source material than any other example.10 Adam lessened the depth of relief, elongated the central fleuron to accommodate the design into an oblong room, and reduced the number of encircling octagons; each is larger than the original, and contains more detail. The result is a superb example of British Neo-Classicism at work; moderation of what Browning has called the ‘bold musculature’ of the original to create a design perfect for the polite environs of an English drawing room.11 Based on contemporary opinion, that the ceiling was an unqualified success, one might have expected the Palmyra motif to become one of Adam and Co.’s stock decorations. The company’s business model was to incorporate a variety of classical decorative schemes and <http://ezproxyprd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:2084/stable/1568541?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents> [19 Dec. 2015]. 9 Browning, p. 77. 10 Browning, p. 93. 11 Browning, p. 93. 48 designs, reusing those that were particularly successful. Adam would later articulate this, attributing his and his brother’s popularity to their ability to ‘seize with some degree of success, the beautiful spirit of antiquity, and to transfuse it, with novelty and variety, through all their numerous works’.12 The Adam ‘Etruscan’ interior is a prime example of this process. Indeed, the company’s success lay in its ability to create interiors that were both instantly recognisable—the à la mode Adam aesthetic—and uniquely adapted to a particular space. The Osterley ceiling seemed to fit these criteria, as it was both fashionable and a personal triumph, but nonetheless Adam would never reuse it.13 Moreover, when his modifications of Plate XIX produced large spandrels at the fleuron’s four corners, he filled them with a curious rococo motif rather than returning to The Ruins for further inspiration. Why did it not become a stock design? Eileen Harris has speculated that the aegis for Osterley’s Palmyra ceiling came not from Adam, but from Sir Francis Dashwood, an early adopter of the Palmyra ceiling who had installed three at his estate at West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.14 As a friend of Dawkins and Wood and founder member of the Society of Dilettanti, Dashwood was at the fore of architectural taste-making, and also enjoyed close connections with Robert Child’s bank, Child & Co.15 Whatever the truth about the genesis of the Osterley ceiling, it has interesting implications for other decorative schemes, and offers a tantalising view of potential interplay between designer, patron, and outside influences. It has been said that Adam’s ceilings ‘required no knowledge, effort or understanding on the part of the spectator’. 16 This is not quite true in the case of the Palmyra ceiling. Whilst a viewer might interpret it as successful or not, according to their taste, only those familiar with The Ruins could recognise the source material and comment authoritatively on its success as an interpretation. For those with that knowledge, the act of viewing could transcend mere aesthetic enjoyment, imparting self-satisfaction and privilege through recognition, and distinguishing the viewer from someone without the requisite understanding. This is seen in practice in the diary of Caroline Lybbe Powys (1738-1817), a landed woman of moderate wealth who assiduously documented her peregrinations around Britain and within society. Despite her ostensible privilege and education, Lybbe Powys was unable to identify the stylistic origin of the Palmyra ceiling in Francis Dashwood’s ‘much talked of’ church.17 She likened it to an Egyptian Hall, presumably in the Vitruvian vein, but had no recent architectural knowledge to draw on and was evidently not furnished with any supplementary information during her visit. This was the pre-information-placard era of the private club, which resounded with secret rites, rebus-like insignia and esoterica.18 12 Robert Adam and James Adam, The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, ed. Henry Hope Reed (London, 1980), p. 14. 13 Adam used a Palmyra motif in only one other project, a ceiling at Bowood House, see Eileen Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam: His Interiors (New Haven, 2001), p.
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