The Allure of the Antique

By: Amy Gale

June 2007

They’re the sort of pieces that rarely come on the market: a pair of giltwood sofas with reeded top rails and baluster legs. For ornamentation, there are carved acanthus leaves, lions’ heads and rosettes. Manifestly Neoclassical, they represent the designer’s synthesis of archaeology with modern furniture making.

That designer was Robert Adam (1728–92), the greatest British architect of the 18th century. In 1981, the two sofas slipped through the auction market with no press notice. The price today for the pair is around $1.5 million.

“Adam’s name is almost a synonym for English late 18th-century style,” says Alan Rubin, the director of Pelham Galleries in London. Born into a family of architects, Adam trained and practiced in Edinburgh. As a young man, he had ambitions to open a London office. The best preparation, he decided, was a grand tour of Italy. He arrived in Rome in 1755, and over the next two years, studied ancient ruins in the company of other artists and architects. These sketching parties visited both the celebrated Roman monuments and the recently excavated sites that gave new insights into ancient domestic interiors. At the same time, he mixed with other tourists, the wealthy English “milords,” who would, he hoped, someday hire him to design their houses.

When Adam returned to London in 1758, he was imbued with an imaginative knowledge of Roman antiquities. His achievement was to assimilate what he had seen in Italy into a graceful scheme of surface ornament and painted decoration. He was immediately successful, undertaking 25 projects in the first three years.

For collectors, Adam presents a challenge because he designed comparatively few pieces of furniture. He was expensive to hire, so many of his clients saved on this “extra” by ordering directly from a furniture maker, who was current with the Classical idiom. Adam typically supplied designs for wall furnishings like mirrors and girandoles, but it was customary to go elsewhere for the seating furniture and other moveable pieces.

Another obstacle: Most of the furniture he designed is still in situ in historic houses or has passed into museum collections. Rubin reports that in the past 15 years, he has made only two sales of pieces designed by Adam, both to museums.

There is, however, a lot of “Adam style” furniture on the market. So pervasive was his influence that by the 1770s furniture makers were turning out pieces based on his designs, which were published in two parts, the first between 1773 and 1778 and the second in 1822.

The market for Adam’s work is strong today. A circa-1770 sideboard with fluted tapering and block feet, a simplified version of one he designed in the late 1760s, sold at auction in London last November for $38,860. Further proof of his influence is the window seat with scrolled arms, which was inspired by the Roman reclining couch. It was a popular seating form during the late 18th century, and examples come on the market often. One sumptuous pair, with fluted columnar legs and upholstered in an Adam-style silk-damask, failed to sell in London five years ago at a low ebb in the furniture market; the estimate was $38,750 to $62,000.The Adam style is characterized by symmetry, delicacy and classical ornament. Paradoxically, one of the most important sales of furniture designed by Adam is not at all representative of this look. A less familiar side of his work is shown by a suite of armchairs and sofas he designed in 1765 for the London house of Sir Lawrence Dundas (c. 1710–81), a draper who made his fortune through lucrative speculations and army contracts. It was for his art patronage, though, that he was invited in 1750 to join the Society of Dilettanti, a dining club that sponsored Classical archaeological expeditions. Dundas’s antiquarian interests, together with his French taste, were incorporated into Adam’s designs for the seating furniture. It was Rococo in form, but the motifs were based on Roman sources. A bas-relief from a sarcophagus supplied the decoration for the sofa façade, and the cabriole legs terminate in paw feet, which was a well-known characteristic of Roman furniture. Thomas Chippendale (1718–79), who executed the hybrid-rococo designs, said they were in “the antick manner.”

In 1997, at a London auction, a pair of the Dundas sofas sold for more than $2.58 million and a pair of the armchairs for more than $2.86 million. The fully documented Chippendale attribution made them a double hit for collectors. The fact that the pieces had never been on the market was a further spur to bidding.

Collectors should be aware that Adam was not the first to adapt the findings of archaeology to design. Beginning in the early 18th century, fashionable houses had been built according to the principles of Andrea Palladio (1508–80), the Italian Renaissance architect. Patrons and architects toured A pair of George III giltwood torchères in the manner of Robert Adam, c. 1775. Palladio’s villas in the region around Venice and studied his writings on ancient Roman architecture. Back home, they built simple and serious country houses, with rusticated facades and classical porticoes. The interior architecture was likewise based on the ancient temple form, with doorways and fireplaces framed by entablatures.

The master had been silent on the subject of decoration, so rooms were furnished according to a mix of Classical and Baroque influences. The most important furniture designer was William Kent (1684/5–1748), who spent 10 years in Italy. The prevalence of sturdily carved masks, terms, and shells— all hallmarks of Palladian design—were due largely to Kent’s influence. Steep prices are paid for the Palladian furniture that passes through the New York salerooms. A recent example is the pair of giltwood side tables, attributed to Kent, that sold last spring at Christie’s for $576,000.

When Adam arrived in London, Palladianism still lingered on in fashion, its heavy forms sometimes softened by Rococo ornament. Looking back, in the 1770s, he spoke with pride of sweeping away this “massive” and “ponderous” style.

Traditional Palladianism was not, however, the only challenge Adam faced. There was potent competition from James “Athenian” Stuart (1713–88), whose achievements Adam anxiously talked down. Renowned in his time, Stuart was for many years overlooked as a pioneer in the Greek Revival, though in recent years the neglect has been  redressed. He is the subject of an exhibition “James Athenian Stuart: the Rediscovery of Antiquity,” organized by the Bard Graduate Center in New York and currently on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. “More than anyone else, Stuart revealed the merit and dignity of Greek architecture and design,” says Bard director Susan Weber Soros.

The exhibition makes clear that Stuart was something of a foil to Adam. Poor and haphazardly educated, Stuart was Roman Catholic at a time when professing that faith incurred serious penalties. After working in London as a decorative painter, he set off on foot for Rome in the early 1740s. Stuart spent 14 years abroad, where he flourished in the fluid, expatriate society of artists and aristocrats. To support himself, he showed foreign visitors around the city. There were churches and palaces to be seen, but the really important sites were associated with Rome’s ancient past. This codified tourist circuit was also known to Stuart from his work painting souvenir fans.Like Adam, Stuart was keenly interested in the archaeological discoveries of the day. In 1750, under the sponsorship of the Society of Dilettanti, he traveled to Greece with Nicholas Revett, an English architect. As late as the Victorian era, a journey there bespoke a spirit of adventure, and in the 18th century it was downright dangerous. Piracy, the plague and attempted murder were some of the dangers Stuart and Revett survived during the two and a half years they spent sketching and measuring the ancient ruins.

On Stuart’s return to England in 1755,  members of the Dilettanti hired him to create furniture based on ancient artifacts. Because the classical world produced only a limited number of forms, Stuart had to innovate. For Spencer House, his most famous commission, he designed a suite of seating furniture based on the Greek throne. “Stuart used the animal legs of the marble throne as a starting point,” says Soros. “Upholstered sofas did not exist in the ancient world, so he invented a sofa form with antique animal legs.”

Stuart was sought after as an architect and antiquarian advisor. His diffused legacy rests, however, on The Antiquities of Athens, the four-volume book he and Revett published, which had an enduring influence on architecture.

As recent sales show, an attribution to Stuart is today worth significantly less than one to Adam. A pair of Rococo armchairs with fluted cabriole legs terminating in Ionic scrolls sold at a Sotheby’s London auction in 2005 for a respectable $82,909. They are believed to be part of a suite that Stuart designed for a fellow member of the Dilettanti. But despite the substantial documentary proof, they sold for only a fraction of what was paid for the Dundas armchairs.

Also on the block in London was a bronze tripod perfume burner, circa 1765, which Stuart is believed to have designed for another member of the Dilettanti. With its pierced bowl supported by fluted sphinxhead supports terminating in animal paws, it is characteristic of the fashion for adapting ancient forms to modern uses. The final bid last spring at Christie’s was $54,545. While not contemptible, it is nowhere near the range for Adam-designed furniture.

Although Stuart had exceptional knowledge of Greek architecture, Adam possessed greater stamina and inventiveness. Less creditably, he copied Stuart’s early work, and maneuvered him out of some commissions. Then again, Stuart could be imprudent and had a reputation for “Epicureanism” (that is, he drank). Accounts of the period neatly (and plausibly) distinguish between Adam the ruthless careerist and Stuart the bohemian flâneur.

There were also artistic differences, though these are less clear-cut. Adam is associated with Roman architecture and Stuart with Greek architecture. But they were not in the replica business; their intention was to make stylish furniture based on Classical models, so they drew on the vestiges of both Greece and Rome.

Moreover, during the late 18th century, it was not always clear what was Greek and what was Roman. The growing awareness of Greek achievements inspired counterarguments in favor of Etruria, the Italian civilization that antedated Rome. Greek art was pretty, so the argument went, but Etruscan art was simple and austere. For proof the Etruscan partisans pointed to the vases then were being excavated in Italy.The Greece-versus-Rome debate was not a sectarian academic quarrel; much of its vitality was supplied by architects and collectors. The dawning realization that the “Etruscan” vases were, in fact, Greek had an important influence on furniture design. Red and black, the colors that had been associated with the Etruscan style, became the province of Greek revivalists. Likewise, it was scenes of Greek life that were depicted on those vases. Hence the klismos chair, which was known to designers from vase paintings. It was revived first in Etruscan-style interiors, though by 1800, it was securely Greek. A staple of today’s furniture sales, the klismos shows how designers continued to look to archaeology, adapting the latest excavations for the drawing room.

That historical awareness lives on in the many pieces that come on the market at a range of prices. Neoclassical furniture is valued by collectors who are drawn to how the ancient world once shaped furniture design.

Amy Gale, a contributor to The Encyclopedia of Sculpture, 2004, teaches in the School of Architecture and Design at the New York Institute of Technology.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
“James Athenian Stuart, 1713–88: The Rediscovery of Antiquity,” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London through June 24. 011.44.20.7942.2000 www.vam.ac.uk
Hyde Park Antiques New York. 212.477.0033. www.hydeparkantiques.com
Mallett Antiques New York. 212.249.8783. www.mallettantiques.com
Pelham Galleries London. 011.44.20.7629.0905. www.pelhamgalleries.com
Philip Colleck New York. 212.486.7600. www.philipcolleck.com