George Steuart and Robert Adam: a Professional Relationship Revealed’, the Georgian Group Journal, Vol
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Sally Goodsir, ‘George Steuart and Robert Adam: A Professional Relationship Revealed’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XVIII, 2010, pp. 91–104 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2010 GEORGE STEUART AND ROBERT ADAM: A PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIP REVEALED SALLY GOODSIR The identities of many of the craftsmen who worked Kedleston, and several large London town houses. for the architectural practice of Robert Adam and his Joseph Rose, junior, independently assisted Sir brothers are known through correspondence, bank Christopher Sykes in designing the decorative work accounts and surviving private archives. The artists at Sledmere, Yorkshire in the late s. Many more Antonio Zucchi, Giovanni Battista Cipriani, specialist craftsmen earned their livelihoods working Biagio Rebecca and Angelica Kauffmann are well on the Adams’ commissions for London town houses, documented for creating decorative panels for Robert country houses and public buildings. Antonio Adam’s interiors and as artists in their own right. Zucchi, Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Biagio Rebecca But no general painter for the interiors has previously and Angelica Kauffmann are well documented for been identified. Using unpublished letters between the creating decorative panels for Robert Adam’s architect George Steuart and the third Duke of Atholl, interiors and as artists in their own right. The names Steuart is here identified for the first time as one of of the craftsmen and artists who worked for Adam these interior painters. The letters also reveal Robert are traceable through his bank account with Adam’s jealously protective attitude towards his Drummond’s, and in the correspondence, bills and architectural practice in London during the s drawings known to architectural historians. There and early s. has been one omission: the name of Adam’s interior painter. obert Adam returned from his tour of the R Continent in and established an architectural practice in London, first in Lower Grosvenor Street and then from within his PAINTING Thames-side development, the Adelphi. His brothers The background of the Scots architect George John, James and William were also involved in Steuart ( c. – ) is largely unknown. From architecture while retaining strong links to their references in his letters to the third and fourth Dukes native Scotland. Robert Adam’s popularity grew of Atholl it can be deduced that he was from through assiduous networking and from the freedom Perthshire and a Gaelic speaker. He had an artist of his style. His expanding and elite client base brother, Charles, whose work survives in the dining required many different craftsmen and labourers, room of Blair Castle, the main seat of the Dukes of some of whom became involved in architecture. Atholl. In George’s will there appears a third brother, The draughtsman Joseph Bonomi became an William, but no existing birth records connect him architect in his own right. The two Joseph Roses, with George and Charles. The particular spelling of uncle and nephew, worked as plasterers at Adam Steuart is indigenous to Perthshire, and it was the commissions such as Harewood, Kenwood, surname of several local gentry families; Steuart’s THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII GEORGE STEUART AND ROBERT ADAM : A PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIP REVEALED Fig. (above). Drawing by Robert Adam of the saloon ceiling at Luton Hoo. Sir John Soane’s Museum . Fig. (right). Drawing by Robert Adam of a first floor ceiling at Luton Hoo. Sir John Soane’s Museum . obvious education suggests that he may have been Until recently Steuart was acknowledged only as related to one of them. George Steuart had no a minor architect, the majority of whose surviving formal architectural training, and appears to have work is in Shropshire. The Salopian connection been self-taught. He had a wife who died in at developed when the third Duke of Atholl introduced their home in Harley Street, London, and one Steuart to Robert More ( – ), the owner of known child, Robert ( c. – ). Steuart moved to Millichope Park. Atholl and More were members of London around the age of nineteen, but little is the Royal Society, and both were experimenting with known of his early career prior to , when he was growing larches for timber on their estates. Steuart living in Berners Street and working as an interior built More a rotunda in his park in , which still and exterior house painter. The third and fourth stands. This must have impressed the local gentry, Dukes of Atholl were his major patrons, for whom as he subsequently designed and built several houses he also became a London agent and family friend. around Shrewsbury, as well as the conventionally The third Duke ( – ) gave him his first neoclassical All Saints’ church, Wellington, and the architectural commission in , renovating his startlingly circular St Chad’s church, Shrewsbury, of London town house in South Audley Street. . St Chad’s is one of the most impressive late Painting work continued throughout his life, eighteenth-century churches in the country. These supplementing architectural commissions for the two churches and Steuart’s surviving Shropshire Atholls and other patrons. He wrote frequent and house, Attingham Park, built – , show his detailed letters to the third and fourth Dukes, but willingness to experiment with geometry. Attingham’s these have been overlooked by previous scholarship, attenuated portico columns are a feature peculiar to and they are not mentioned in the entries on Steuart Steuart, and an unusual Francophile influence is in H.M. Colvin’s A Biographical Dictionary of apparent in its plan, especially in the two gendered British Architects, – and the Oxford enfilades on the piano nobile culminating in an ultra- Dictionary of National Biography . masculine octagonal study and a feminine circular THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII GEORGE STEUART AND ROBERT ADAM : A PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIP REVEALED boudoir, its delicately painted interior attributed to ARCHITECTURE Louis-Andre Délabrière. Steuart’s renovations in South Audley Street for the However, it is also important to relocate Steuart third Duke of Atholl did not satisfy the Duke’s desire within the London practice which he built over forty for a prestigious family town house. Atholl therefore years, the output of which has largely been demolished leased a building plot in Grosvenor Place, a new or altered. Steuart’s surviving buildings have been street behind Buckingham House, and Steuart was the focus of formal stylistic analysis, but they have appointed architect in . Such a prestigious only survived because of their distance from the client, so substantial a commission and such a newly ever-evolving capital. A study of Steuart’s letters to fashionable location aroused jealousy in his part- the third and fourth Dukes of Atholl reveal a time employer, Robert Adam. Steuart had expected professional relationship with Robert Adam during to be contracted as the painter for the interior of the s and early s, which establishes Steuart Adam’s Luton Hoo, the Bedfordshire seat of former within an urbanised professional career. Steuart and Prime Minister and fellow Scot the third Earl of Adam were both Scots with their main residences Bute, and wrote to the third Duke: and professional premises in London. Adam, whose ‘About a year ago I solicited Mr Adam to be employ’d family came from Kirkcaldy, Fife, established himself as painter at a Very Capital Building under his in London nine years later than Steuart, and their direction Carrying on at Lutton for Lord Bute, and he shared nationality must have created a bond that did promise I should be employ’d, and I actualy did strengthened their professional relationship. furnish by his Order Materials for that Work; about A relationship between Steuart and the Adam Weeks ago Mr Adam sent another person there to Work.’ brothers first emerged in . In April of that year Steuart was appointed ‘Painter to the Board of Steuart called on Adam, and was informed that the Ordonance for North Britain, which will occasion other painter came with a superior recom men da tion. my going to Scotland.’ At the time Robert Adam’s Surviving Adam drawings show the intended colourful older brother John was Mason to the Board of plaster ceilings (Figs. –). The usurping painter and Ordnance in Scotland. The Board was a government his workmen would have travelled to Bedfordshire department responsible for the maintenance of with tinted drawings of the ceilings and other plans. defences and ordnance logistics. Steuart’s Steuart refused to accept that Adam had received a appointment was confirmed by the Marquess of superior recommendation, and sent a friend to Granby ( – ), an army commander and Master question Adam further. Adam then: General of the Ordnance. Robert Adam may have ‘… imprudently gave for reason that altho’ he did not recommended Steuart to this position, since their mind it, it was taking the bread out of their mouths, my professional relationship predated Steuart’s freind considering the great success of the Brothers, appointment. Steuart’s letters reveal a wide and my attention to their Intrest, heartly despis’d the knowledge of paint production, shipping lead white Littleness of mind and wish’d me success in a Capacity that gave them uneasiness. the whole and verdigris to Scotland for the third Duke of convinces me I have no great loss in their pretended Atholl, for instance, and enquiring if the Duchess attachment to me, and I am perfectly easy about the would prefer blue or green verditer in the main matter, as I never entertain a Confidence in a man who rooms of the family’s London town house. once breaks his promise, and philosopher enough to know providence always opens one Door when another shuts.’ THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XVIII GEORGE STEUART AND ROBERT ADAM : A PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIP REVEALED Fig. The Library at Kenwood, designed by Robert Adam, – . © English Heritage Photo Library .