Robert Adam _Renowned Architect

Robert Adam was born in Scotland in 1728. His father, William Adam, was the most renowned architect in the town. After his father’s death in 1748, Robert Adam went on the Grand Tour to pursue becoming an architect like his father. He stayed in Rome and London for an extended period of time during his Grand Tour. According to Bergdoll, Adam’s excessive studies of the antiquity period was noted to be a skill that was intended to challenge other architects such as William Chambers and Robert Mylne. Robert Adam eventually befriended the French architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau as his drawing master and the Italian printer, Giovanni Piranesi, for collaboration of sketches. He hired many young architects as well to help his studies. Adam’s goal was to rid of the appeal of the James ‘Athenian’ Stuart’s style. At this time his brother, and future business partner, James Adam, was sent to the Greek Islands as his own Roman Grand Tour to publish plates of Greek design to later challenge that of Stuart’s style.[1] In London, Robert Adam persuaded patron Sir Nathaniel Curzon to accept his interior designs for the English country house Kedleston in Derbyshire over that of Stuart’s own designs, already obtained by the baronet.

In the 1700’s Sir Nathaniel Curzon, 2nd baronet of London, had a red brick home built by Francis Smith of Warwick. Charles Bridgeman was the first

[1] Bergdoll, Barry. European Architecture (1750-1890). (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 34.