.ARCHITECTURE : ADAM, SOANE, AND 1921.

SINCE the happy day when Mr. Arthur Bolton was installed as its curator, the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields has become a little fountain yielding an intermittent stream of history and criticism of high interest to every architect and

antiquary.

In addition to the series of special pamphlets and mono- graphs already issued. Mr. Bolton has now given us a, more complete picture of Sir John Soane and his house in the Cantor Lectures of the Society of Arts, The Architecture and Decoration of Robert Adam and Sir John Scant.*

To most of us Scene's work may seem curious rather than inspiring; we feel, perhaps, that he was the leader of an expedition that never reached its goal :— " It is not pretended that Soane as an architect ranks with a master like Robert Adam. He is always a pioneer, pointing towards something, which, perhaps, is incapable of being realized, and all the time hampered himself by difficulties of expression never completely mastered."

Yet his work at the Bank of England alone gives him a distinct place in the succession of English architects :— " The interior of the Bank especially is remarkable because, although there is an apparent following of the scheme of the Roman thermae, the character of the design is entirely novel. It is more modem than much that is projected or executed to-day. Soane's feeling for the bones of the architectural corpus is almost uncanny."

Appreciation of Soane's work suffered a rapid decline after his death—he was always rather an " architect's architect '' —and much of his work was demolished before his claim to respect as an original and ingenious builder was securely re- established. The work of the Adam brothers had a somewhat tighter hold on life and better survived the inevitable clouding- over of their tradition, though the destruction during the Greek and Gothic revivals was reckless and disastrous enough. The creed and the place in English Architecture of Robert Adam and of Soane are very lucidly summarized :— " Soane as an artist, moreover, was an outcome of Robert Adam's revolutionary mission, belonging more to the Adam and Dance group than to the more orthodox school of Chambers, Taylor, and Paine. The fundamental idea of Robert Adam that lay at the root of his revolution was the thesis that the domestic architecture of the Greeks and Romans was entirely distinct from that of their temples.' This proposition, which may, perhaps, be regarded as merely a commonplace to-day, called in question the validity of the system of the orders which had been the subject of so much study since men had first turned to the remains of Roman antiquity as a new basis for building, in the earliest days of the Renaissance. Palladio had systematized the use of the orders, and the universal admiration for his building achievements at Vicenza and Venice had carried his style throughout Europe. His Architettura ' (1570) had been Inigo Jones's handbook in Italy, and the Anglo- Palladian School was fortified by more than a century of suc- cessful practice in England. Robert Adam's earliest work, after his return in 1758 from Italy, is leavened by this tradition, and there has always been a body of opposition to his revolu- tionary theories and their application in architecture. Some accepted Adam's basis, but modified it by the adoption of those Greek ideas and details against which Sir William Chambers had thundered in vain. The Bank of England, to which Some had been appointed architect in 1788, was the field in which from 1794 onwards this later revolution of Soave's was manifested. The opposition was intense ; the feelings of the remnant of the old school were outraged by the young architect's substitution of such unorthodox work, in place of the sound tradition of the school of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. After the great war the older school was practically extinct. The Greek and Gothic revivals were in possession of the field, until, in the last years of Soane's life, a new chapter was • The Architedure and Decoration of Robert Aden and Sir John Some. R A Castor Lectures, Royal Society of Arta. 1920, Sy Arthur T. Bolton, F.S.A., F./LIMA. Loudon: Win. Clowe3 arid Bola. 123. add

commenced by the introduction of the Florentine and Romaii; , Astylar manner, introduced by Sir Charles Barry, B.A."

Again of Robert Adam :- " Broadly speaking, the mission of Adam was a recall to the principle that in any. treatment of the surface of a building, whether external or internal, the value of the relative planes may be a primary consideration. . .Robert Adam very soon treated the orders with the same *freedom externally as he had claimed internally. He asserts that the architect possessed of any degree of mastery can, and should, vary the received proportions and features of the orders. He thus freed

himself of the hampering effect of deep entablatures, oom of the full architrave, frieze, and cornice, as strictly ated by the width and height of the pilaster or column."

Few architects have had, or indeed have so well deserved, the good fortune of Adam in being allowed to design so many interiors complete to the last detail—carpet, furniture, wall hangings, curtains, mirrors and all. His less fortunate successor is only too grateful if he is permitted to " suggest " merely the general colour-treatment of his walls—it being too generally assumed that the architect is paid off with the plasterers—as though he had no vision of the rooms he created save as bare

boxes with sufficient means of access, lighting, and warming. Most happily Adam enjoyed the confidence of a number of enlightened patrons who appreciated the aesthetic advantages of " unity of command " and gave him wide powers in the finishing and perfecting of his works, their homes.

The resulting excellence of such interiors cannot, obviously, be taken as proof of the universal wisdom of giving a " free hand " to one's architect; unless the hand be gifted, the more it is

tied the better. The wise client will, in short, first find the right hand, and then set it as free as circumstances permit:— "The drawing-rooms at Newby and Osterley are glorious pieces of colour. Every detail has been successfully combined by Adam in the general effect of the whole. He had already in the great room at Kenwood experimented in the direction of subduing by flat washes of colour the glare of a purely white ceiling ornamented in stucco. This was a very different method from the tiresome ' picking-out ' of parts in colour and gold, which followed in the early part of the next century. As used by. Robert Adam this colour treatment is essentially a wash, intended to blend the effect of the whole, and not to isolate particular ornaments, or lines of mouldings."

A master of " relief " surface decoration, Adam clearly apprehended the importance of colour too, producing combined effects of a rare subtlety and beauty.

As part of the natural reaction against an excess of inferior " swag-and-plaque " plaster-work, interior colour is now receiv- ing more attention than actual form, and as colour-mastery and paint-craft become surer, it is probable that the painter will largely supplant the carver, the joiner, and the marble mason.

We are at last grown out of the narrow Ruskinian doctrine of literal " truth," and the enlightened will no more demand real marble in their pilasters than real trees in the Forest of Arden. In so many directions " the real thing " has indeed become so prohibitively costly that it seems somewhat gross and ostentatious to use it when an imaginative substitute ie readily obtainable.

Except perhaps for great public monuments, there would seem something almost dull, snobbish, and material about the purist who demands " the genuine article " whether in figured mahogany or lapis-lazuli.