Adam, James
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- Adam, James
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(1732 - 94), architect, 3rd s. of William Adam, architect of Edinburgh; suc. his bro. Robert as Architect of the King's Works 1769 - 82.
1760 - 3 [dep. England May 1760] Turin (13 Jun.), Venice (by 25 Jun. - 20 Oct.) with visits to Pola, Padua, Vicenza, Verona; Ferrara, Bologna ( - 22 Nov.), Florence (23 Nov. 1760 - 20 Feb. 1761) with visits to Pisa and Leghorn (late Dec. - early Jan.); Siena, Rome (24 Feb. - Aug.), Naples (Aug. - Dec.) with visit to Paestum (mid-Nov.); Rome (13 Dec. 1761 - May 1763), Florence, Bologna, Parma
While he shared much of his older brother Robert's aesthetic discernment and possessed considerable literary gifts, he appears to have lacked the latter's original vision, energy and single-minded drive for professional advancement. Although preparing the way for Robert's return from his own grand tour in January 1758 and establishing their London base before leaving for the Continent in May 1760, James's more important contributions in their formidable collaboration were to come later. Characteristic of his attitude in the surviving correspondence from Italy is his observation that he was the only British artist who 'kept his own coach and assumes the title of Cavaliere'.1 Robert had first requested James to join him in Rome during the autumn of 1755, but the latter set out from Harwich, well after his brother's return. He travelled as a Jacobite officer (a disguise arranged by Robert's friend, General William Graeme) and was accompanied by George Richardson, a draughtsman from the family firm in Edinburgh.
In Venice, where he arrived in June 1760, apart from recording further monuments for Robert, he was to direct the completion of the plates for his brother's ambitious folio The Ruins of the Emperor Diocletian's Palace at Spalatro. For this he hired a fourth engraver, Domenico Cunego, to assist Bartolozzi, Santini and Zucchi. Meanwhile he learnt Italian, practised drawing under Cl?risseau, made contacts with English residents and tourists, and bought paintings (especially by Zuccarelli). Brief visits were made to Padua (where he predictably impressed Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, as Robert before him) and Pola. When visiting Vicenza in October, he found a young draughtsman, Giuseppe Sacco, whom he sent ahead with Richardson to Florence. Adam and Cl?risseau proceeded to Bologna, where, like Robert again, they met Count Algarotti and where, according to James, he was elected to the Accademia Clementina (though no record appears to survive).2 They eventually reached Florence, via Ferrara, on 23 November, and stayed with Ignazio Hugford who acted as their guide. Here Adam enlisted another young draughtsman, Agostino Scara, whom he intended to take to Rome and train for Robert's office. They visited Pisa and Leghorn where James's first attempt to organise an expedition to Sicily and the Levant met with failure.
They arrived in Rome on 24 February 1761, staying in the Casa Guarnieri, close to the top of the Spanish Steps (where Robert had previously lived in some style), joined by Zucchi and Cunego from Venice. Although the Abb? Grant relayed James's social conquests to Robert, Cl?risseau reported a worrying lack of application. By the summer Adam was supervising the drawing of monuments and studying antique remains. Unlike Robert in this situation, however, he appears to have made little use of Piranesi's unique knowledge or perceptions, only contacting him to urge on the publication of the impressive folio, Il Campo Marzio dell'Antica Roma, dedicated to his brother.3 In late August 1761 he departed for Naples with Richardson to renegotiate the Eastern trip. There he met Thomas Pitt, the 3rd Duke of Roxburghe and Sir Francis Eyles-Styles, with whom he visited Vanvitelli's palace at Caserta, then nearing completion. Towards the end of September Cl?risseau and Zucchi had arrived from Rome, and in the absence of passports for the Levant expedition, they went to Benevento to record the Arch of Trajan. They also made studies of Pompeii (where the excavations were beginning to draw attention away from Herculaneum), the gaunt temples at Paestum ('They are of an early, an inelegant and unenriched Doric, that afford no detail,' he wrote, 'and scarcely produce two good views') and Capri, all of which James intended to form part of an impressive volume, Antiquities of Sicily and Graecia Major. Eventually, the continuing delay over passports caused him to postpone the projected voyage to Sicily and the Levant and he returned to Rome in mid-December.
One of the more productive sides to his tour was Adam's art dealing activities. Assisted by the Abb? Grant's contacts, he proceded to acquire paintings and sculpture. By July 1762, he had acquired some 500 pictures 'besides drawings, antiquities, modellos, gessos &ca valued at £;1,500 more'. Undoubtedly his greatest coup (although Robert is likely to have prepared the way) was to arrange the purchase of Cardinal Albani's unrivalled collection of old master drawings for George III.4 Despite considerable reluctance on the owner's side, the pressing need for money to provide a dowry for the daughter of the Cardinal's liaison with Countess Cheroffini (whose literary salon James regularly attended), clinched the deal and the collection was dispatched to Leghorn in July 1762. In May 1764 James Martin saw in Rome 'a Collection of Statues, Busts, aca. belonging to one Mr Adams', conceivably Robert and/or James Adam.5
After some pressure, Piranesi had finally produced the long-awaited folio on the Campus Martius, eulogising Robert as 'Architectus Celeberrimus' on the title page, and on 21 May James reported to his brother the dispatch of some £;120 worth of the plates for promotional sale in England. Meanwhile, in the same month their younger brother, William, had sent a ship for the proposed Levant journey but, as this was seized by the Spanish navy and taken to Algeciras, James (with very little reluctance) abandoned the project altogether. Increasingly aware that his three Italian years had few practical results to show in comparison with Robert's tour, James now threw his energies into finalizing designs for a projected rebuilding of the British Parliament, begun in a desultory manner some eighteen months before. The gratifying response from Sir James Gray and Sir Francis Eyles-Styles after a private exhibition of the finished drawings (probably by Cl?risseau, Zucchi and others), at the Casa Guarnieri on 22 October, prompted James to show 'a capital of [his] own invention', incorporating lions, unicorns, roses and thistles, to Natoire, Director of the French Academy. While the latter affected to be impressed (Natoire said he 'would have taken it for antique'), Piranesi was to refer more enthusiastically to it a few years later in his Parere su l'Architettura (1765) as illustrating his novel theories of eclectic composition, and a wax model of it features prominently in an unattributed portrait of James executed in 1763 (priv. coll.; formerly attrib. to Batoni).
After the Peace of Paris was signed in November 1762, James successfully obtained family permission to remain in Rome a further six months (although little record survives of his activities); he was probably the 'Monzu Adan' who with a 'Monzu Giorgio' was living in the Piazza di Spagna at Easter 1763.6 He finally left for England in May 1763. Since Cunego and Zucchi had declined to go to London, James hired three draughtsmen for the London office before his departure, leaving Cl?risseau to act as his agent (later to be replaced by the Abb? Grant). Reviewing his scant achievements in Italy with becoming candour, James was subsequently to observe that 'I believe that biographers will chose to pass over this part of my life in profound silence'.
1. See Fleming, Adam, 267 - 314. James's travel jnl. was printed in The Library of Fine Arts, 2[1831]:nos.9 - 10 (erroneously attributed to Robert Adam). 2. See Salmon 1990, 204.
3. See J. Wilton-Ely in Piranesi tra Venezia e l'Europa, ed. A. Bettagno, 297 - 303. 4. J. Fleming, Connoisseur, 142[1958]:164 - 9. 5. Martin jnl.MSS (6 May 1764). 6. AVR sa, S.Andrea delle Fratte.
J. W.-E.