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Lot Essay
The doors, with French fashioned central-opening, are richly carved with antique-fluted 'tablet' frames and Apollo sunflowered 'patera' medallions to reflect the George III 'Roman' fashion introduced by the court architect Robert Adam (d.1796). Adam, popularly known as 'Bob the Roman', followed his studies in Italy in the 1750s with the publication of Ruins of the Emperor Diocletian's Palace at Spalatro, 1762, which helped advertise his London architectural practice. The grandeur of the Imperial palace also contributed to the Adam brothers late 1760s designs for the Adelphi, their monumental Thames-side development, which provided their offices and became the center of their Adelphic style of the late 1760s. These doors not only represent the mature Adelphic style, which harmonized the architecture of ceilings and walls with that of the room-furnishings by the introduction of Roman-fashioned tablets and medallions, but they also gain added interest through their association with the celebrated actor David Garrick (d. 1779) and his wife Eva Maria. These doors, whose panels would have been elegantly japanned with filigreed 'antique' or 'arabesque' ornament, are reputed to have formed part of their Drawing Room at No. 5 Adelphi Terraces/Buildings. This adjoined Robert Adam's home at No. 4, which shared the same patterned doors (A.T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, London, 1922, p.33). Garrick addressed Robert and James Adam as 'My dear adelphi' [Greek for brothers]. His ceiling, painted in the early 1770s and celebrating Apollo as Leader of the Muses of Artistic Inspiration, now forms part of the Victoria & Albert Museum's British Galleries, where it is accompanied by two of his Drawing Room chairs (M. Snodin, Design and the Decorative Arts; Britain 1500-1900, 2001, p. 271, figs. 49 and 48). The paintings of the doors may have been executed by David Adamson, who was one of the principal painters employed by the Adam brothers, and would have been similar to the contemporary Etruscan patterned doors introduced at the Earl of Derby's house (The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, vol. II, no. 1, 1779, pl. 8). The Adelphi Buildings Terraces on the Strand were demolished in the mid-1930s.