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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
To make the identification of a source the determining factor in the dating of an architectural design is tantamount to making the tail wag the dog. This is precisely what has happened to James Paine’s unexecuted design for the south front of Kedleston. Unable to find any precedent prior to the 1770s for its giant domed and colonnaded bow, Christopher Webster hastily concluded that the design, which does not survive and is known only from the engravings published by Paine in 1783 in the second volume of his Plans, was made shortly before that publication and specially for it; not in 1759 for Lord Scarsdale, as Paine claimed and architectural historians have always believed.
1 Webster, C., ‘Architectural Illustration as Revenge: James Paine’s Designs for Kedleston’, The Image of the Building: Papers from the Annual Symposium of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1995, ed. Howard, M. (1996), pp. 83–92 Google Scholar.
2 Paine, J., Plans, elevations and sections of noblemen and gentlemen’s houses (London, 1783), 11, pls 42–52 Google Scholar.
3 Graves, A., The Society of Artists of Great Britain, Kingsmead Reprints (Bath, 1969), p. 186 Google Scholar.
4 Leach, P., ‘James Paine’s Design for the South Front of Kedleston Hall: Dating and Sources’, Architectural History, vol. 40, pp. 159–170 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Castell, R., Villas of the Ancients (London, 1728), p. 1 Google Scholar.
6 Manuscript library catalogue of 1765 at Kedleston.
7 Harris, L., Robert Adam and Kedleston, The National Trust (1987), p. 23 Google Scholar. Webster, art. cit., p. 85.
8 C. Webster, loc. cit.
9 Brettingham’s designs have never been traced. His plan may have resembled his plan of 2 August 1759 for Lowther Castle. Architectural drawings from Lowther Castle, ed. Colvin, H., Crook, J. Mordaunt, Friedman, T., Architectural History Monographs: no. 2, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (1980), no. 46, pl. 12 Google Scholar. Robert Adam wrote to his brother James in Rome on 11 December 1758 telling him that he had been shown Brettingham’s designs and made alterations to them. SRO Clerk MSS 4854.
10 Adam’s plan can be fairly precisely dated by a letter of 10 May 1760 to Curzon regarding a door on the east wall of the music room ‘which had been drawn by mistake in the first copy of your plans & overlooked in the clean Design Though I had marked it with pencil lines to be shurt up’ (Kedleston Archive). The plan at the Soane, SM 40:6, has the door hatched in pencil and is evidently the ‘first copy’.
11 The last payment to Paine was on 3 June 1761. In response to questions about his final account, he wrote to Lord Scarsdale on 1 March 1762:, ‘I beg leave to assure your Lordship, that whatever petty light Mr Wyatt may see in, I have no such views, nor any but to behave with that becoming Respect, & Duty that is required from me to you.’ His final account was settled in February 1763 (Kedleston Archive).
12 Graves, op. cit., p. 186.
13 Several houses in Paine’s Plans were only partially executed, for example Worksop, Axwell, Belford and Cowick Hall.
14 Webster, art. cit., p. 87. Leach, art. cit., p. 160.
15 Some of the information contained in this article will be found in the author’s forthcoming book on Robert Adam’s furnished interiors.