Robert and James Adam, Architects of the Age of Enlightenment

Ariyuki Kondo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781848931794
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317322504
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

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.

1
Men of Learning

The Formative Years

John Summerson roughly reduces the Adam style to four sources: (1) Palladianism of the Burlington-Kent school; (2) French planning; (3) Archaeo-logical influences from Italy, Dalmatia, Syria and Greece; and (4) the influence of Renaissance masters such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Giulio Romano.¹ The real nature of the Adam style is misleading, however, in so far as it seems to stress these stylistic sources at the expense of its profound relation to the intellectual development in Britain, especially in Scotland, from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. It was their dependence on contemporary intellectual maturation that integrated the diversified aspects of their style. This was the most profound source of inspiration for their architectural exercises, and was in part the consequence of their liberal education and, above all, their intimacy with the rising generation of the Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century.

When the Adam brothers were participating actively in the field of architecture, Scotland’s Enlightenment movement was flowering. Enlightenment thought provoked dramatic developments in the areas of law, politics, philosophy and culture in general. And urban society responded directly to these developments with the construction of new public buildings, urban development and improvements of transportation facilities and social structure. Scotland was in the age of improvement.

In Edinburgh in particular the architectural ideas and suggestions of the Adam brothers attracted public attention and were always considered seriously. Their contributions to the development of the city of Edinburgh went far beyond that of the regular architect. It was in Edinburgh, the capital city of the Enlightenment movement in the second half of eighteenth-century Europe, where they gave full play to their talents and put their ideas into practice in various monumental public buildings. In Edinburgh, part of the success of Robert and James Adam was the result of the family’s intimacy with the circle of authority in Scotland, largely through the personal acquaintances and patronage of their father, William Adam (1689–1748), an architect representative of the first half of the eighteenth century in Scotland, and John Adam (1721–92), eldest of the Adam brothers and a prominent figure in mid-eighteenth-century Edinburgh society.

Among William Adam’s circle of acquaintances and patrons were the Hopes of Hopetoun and the Clerks of Penicuik, two distinctive aristocratic families in Scotland. William Adam shared intellectual ideas and artistic tastes with these noblemen, and the intimacy that he had enjoyed was to be inherited by his sons, and to bring the brothers professional opportunities.

It was Charles Hope, the first Earl of Hopetoun (1681–1742), with whom William was the most intimate within his circle. He became Earl of Hopetoun in 1703 and lived on the family estate near Linlithgow where his ancestors had been established since the sixteenth century. William was commissioned to carry out the enlargement and modernization of Hopetoun House by Sir William Bruce (c. 1630–1710), and afterwards worked closely with the Hopes of Hopetoun throughout his career. After William’s death in 1748, the Adam brothers continued their father’s close connection with the Hopes.² In 1754, Robert accompanied Charles Hope (1710–91), younger brother of the heir of Earl Hope, John (later the second Earl of Hopetoun), on the grand tour.

Another important friend and patron for William Adam was Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (1676–1755), who was intimate with almost all the leading figures of art and letters of his day in Britain, from Richard Boyle, Lord Burlington (1694–1753) to Samuel Gale (1682–1754) and William Stukeley (1687–1765), Ralph Thoresby (1658–1725), and so on. Of the role of William Adam in the circle of the Clerks of Penicuik in Scotland, Fleming writes:

At home, whether in Edinburgh or at his country-house at Penicuik, he gathered round himself a miniature Accademia dell’ Arcadia of which the poet Allan Ramsay, the antiquarian Alexander Gordon and the architect William Adam were the principal ornaments; and through them and his other protégés he exerted a wide influence on the development of Scottish art and letters. William Adam in particular, who became the architect-in-ordinary to this little society, owed much to the classical learning and taste of his patron³

The Adams’ close connection with the Clerks of Penicuik was not only through an architect–patron relationship, but also through the marriage of Susannah, a younger sister of Robert and James, to John Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812), the seventh son of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, and a childhood and life-long friend of Robert and James.

While continuing to be closely connected with wealthy patrons, mainly through their institutional education and socialities during their formative years, Robert and James both became intimate with a number of culturally well-rounded professional urban gentlemen, whose diverse knowledge and interests made a considerable impact on the formation of their personal style in architecture and theory. Robert’s institutional education started when he entered the Edinburgh High School in Blackfriar’s Wynd, Edinburgh, at the age of six. Latin was the only subject taught at the High School, and at the end of their studies the pupils were expected to have ‘a sound knowledge of Latin grammar and literature, especially Cicero, but of nothing else’.⁴ Some of the classes were even conducted entirely in the Latin tongue. In their spare time, students were also expected to master ‘writing, English and other “accomplishments”, particularly the speaking of English (and not Scots)’.⁵ In the High School, Robert read Cordery’s Colloquies and Erasmus’s Syntax, then Cicero’s Epistles, Terence’s Comedies and Buchanan’s Psalms. Fleming points out that ‘Robert’s last two years & would have been spent in conning Virgil, Ovid, Caesar, Terence and Cicero, especially the last’.⁶ And through the detailed reading of Cicero, ‘the balance, symmetry and resonance of the stately Ciceronian periods were drummed into Robert’s ears, week in week out, and the ancient Roman was held up to his youthful eyes as the paragon of eloquence and noble exemplar of friendship, stoicism and civilised leisure’.⁷

Robert Adam, now with a considerable knowledge of Latin, matriculated at Edinburgh University in the autumn of 1743 where he seems to have lived his student life with multiple interests. While his ‘classical education received a final polish’,⁸ Robert would have had the chance to read Greek, logic, metaphysics and natural philosophy – all required subjects in those days. Besides such famous names as John Pringle (1707–82)⁹ and Colin Maclaurin (1698–1746),¹⁰ among excellent professors within the University was Charles Mackie (1688–1770), first holder of the chair of universal history at Edinburgh, whose European history class is said to have been attended by William Robertson (1721–93) and David Hume (1711–76), two close acquaintances of the Adam brothers. Mackie also read lectures on the subject of Roman antiquities dealing with all aspects of Roman culture, as well as on the history of the world in which the intellectual transition from the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to the Reformation was examined. The matriculation roll of the University has one possible matriculation entry for Robert Adam under the name of ‘Robert Adams’, the name Robert had used during his formative years. According to this record, on either 25 February or 30 April 1744, Robert matriculated in the class of George Stuart (c. 1715–93), Professor of the Latin language and Roman antiquities. Robert, who later showed a strong interest in Roman antiquity, was one of the early students of Stuart, who had started his thirty-five years of academic life in 1741 and was ‘particularly successful in explaining the Roman antiquities to the higher classes of his students; and, by the dignity of his aspect and manners, inspired his hearers with an enthusiastic admiration of the language and literature of antient Rome’.¹¹

Robert left the University in 1746 without taking a degree to work for his father as an apprentice assistant, treading in the path of his elder brother John. In those days, among the students in the fields of arts, it was uncommon to graduate formally from universities in Scotland. Robert was not exceptional. Of James’s education at Edinburgh University, not much is known, including the exact period when he matriculated as a student. However, it is said, according to the account of John Clerk of Eldin, that he read literature and the Belles Lettres.¹²

The comprehensive educational curriculum at Edinburgh University was designed to acquaint students with a wide range of academic disciplines and produce well-rounded gentlemen. The emergence of the rising generation of the Enlightenment in mid-eighteenth-century Scotland and their enterprising ideas were in part a consequence of this fact. While a number of courses offered by brilliant teachers treated a variety of subjects, which were to evolve in the course of the growth of the Scottish Enlightenment, the teachers themselves were not necessarily a part of the circles whose academic activities were the driving force behind the new development in thought. Instead, it was a number of intellectual students who were to become the leading figures of the Enlightenment movement in Britain from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. During his study at the University, Robert became intimate with many promising students. Among these included: William Robertson, historian and later the Principal of Edinburgh University for three decades, who was a close friend and a cousin of the Adam brothers; Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), sociologist and the author of An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767); John Home (1722–1808), playwright and poet, who was also the secretary to John Stuart, the third Earl of Bute (1713–92); Alexander Carlyle (1722–1805), a minister of the Church of Scotland; Gilbert Elliot of Minto (1693–1766), senator of the College of Justice; William Wilkie (1721–72), Scottish poet, known as the ‘Scottish Homer’, and the author of The Epigoniad (1757), who was also the professor of natural philosophy at St Andrews University; and Alexander Wedderburn, Lord Chancellor, the first Baron Loughborough and first Earl of Rosslyn (1733–1805). As we shall see later, his friendships with this mid-eighteenth-century rising generation of Edinburgh intellectuals were to continue consistently after he left the University. It was also during their formative years in Edinburgh, when Robert and James both first became intimate with a number of literati who were their seniors: Amongst these were David Hume, the most important figure of the mid-eighteenth century Scottish Enlightenment movement; Adam Smith (1723–90), founder of the modern science of economics who is famous as the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776); Hugh Blair (1718–1800), a Presbyterian divine and minister of St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh and literary critic who was the first professor of rhetoric and Belles Lettres at Edinburgh University; and Henry Home, Lord Kames, a high court judge and senator of the College of Justice, and author of the Elements of Criticism (1762).

Through this wide and notable circle of acquaintances, the Adam brothers, whose reputations as architects and interior designers were to be internationally recognized within the following decade, came into contact with the current of the Scottish Enlightenment in the second half of the eighteenth century. ‘They were indeed a very remarkable group of men and their influence on the young Adams was capital’,¹³ Fleming has remarked. And it is nothing other than their intellectual intimacy with those men of genius and learning of the Scottish Enlightenment that set them distinctly apart from the rest of the eighteenth-century architects and builders, among whom were Sir William Chambers (1723–96) and Robert Mylne (1733–1811). The brothers themselves must have been aware of the difference or superiority of their background and education, which Fleming explains:

For whereas the Adam brothers were brought up in a cultivated atmosphere of hard living and high thinking, were accustomed since childhood to hear their father and uncles and cousins bandying quotations from the classical authors across the family fireside and discussing abstract questions of theology and philosophy at the supper table, the majority of English and Scottish architects had been humbly bred up to a trade then considered little better than that of a mason, plumber or joiner. While Chambers was swabbing the deck of a Swedish East-Indiaman and Mylne was hewing wood and stone in a mason’s yard, the Adams were enjoying a liberal education in the humanities and were being forced to show their mettle in argument with some of the liveliest and keenest brains in an intellectual society hardly to be surpassed in any city of Europe.¹⁴

The Athens of the North

Edinburgh is a hot-bed of genius. I have had the good fortune to be made acquainted with many authors of the first distinction; such as the two Humes, Robertson, Smith, Wallace, Blair, Ferguson, Wilkie, &c., and I have found them all as agreeable in conversation as they are instructive and entertaining in their writings. These acquaintances I owe to the friendship of Dr. Carlyle, who wants nothing but inclination to figure with the rest upon paper.¹⁵

Tobias Smollett, in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

Since the nineteenth century, Edinburgh has been proud to style itself ‘the Athens of the North’. It is well understood that this epithet was merited, not only because of the tradition of classical architecture within the city, but primarily because of Edinburgh’s reputation as one of Europe’s intellectual capitals, which emerged in the second half of the preceding century. Appreciating the intellectual prominence of the Scottish circle of learning in the city, the Irish elocutionist Thomas Sheridan (1719–88), most likely on his visit to Edinburgh in June 1761, had distinguished Edinburgh as ‘the Athens of Great Britain’. Edinburgh herself must have drawn confidence from this title. The Scottish divine Alexander Carlyle writes in a letter dated 29 July 1761, to a fellow Scotsman Gilbert Elliot: ‘Sheridan has told us that Edinburgh is the Athens of Great Brittain [sic], & we believe him.’¹⁶

The focus for much of the eighteenth-century Edinburgh intellectual scene at its peak was in the large number of societies and clubs that flourished in the city, encouraging discourse and debate. They were exceedingly accessible to every profession including, as Alexander Carlyle reported: ‘all the Literati of Edinburgh and its neigbbo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• List of Figures
• Prefatory Note
• Introduction
• 1 Men of Learning
• 2 Novelty and Variety: An Enlightenment Vision
• 3 ‘Movement’: The Picturesque in Architecture
• 4 Civic Improvement: Edinburgh in the Enlightenment
• Closing Remarks
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index