View of Somerset Place, including the Adelphi, etc

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

The Adelphi was a complex of buildings, which included an elevated terrace of 22 private houses. One of its most famous residents was the actor David Garrick. The space below the terrace was rented out as warehouse accommodation. Built between 1768 and 1773, the Adelphi development was highly imaginative, but in the event financially disastrous, for Scottish architect brothers Robert (1728-1792) and James Adam (1732-1794). Their bid for immortality was enshrined in the name of the buildings; ‘Adelphoi’ being Greek for brothers. Like the architects, the workforce came from Scotland: large numbers of Scottish labourers were brought to work on the site at a cheap rate and bagpipes were played daily. However, a national credit crisis of 1772 led to the abandonment of the project and to near financial ruin for the Adam brothers. With the exception of No. 7 Adam Street and one or two others, the buildings were demolished in 1936.

Joseph Farington was born in Leigh, Lancashire, son of the vicar of Leigh and rector of Warrington. He was educated in Manchester and studied under Richard Wilson in London from 1763. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1769 and became an Academician in 1785. His strength was in pen, ink and wash drawings of topographical views. He made extensive sketching tours of the UK and settled in the North Country from 1776. Works made there led to the publication ‘Views of the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland’ (1785). In 1780 he suffered a breakdown after his wife died. In the next year he moved to London. He died on a visit to his brother in Lancashire, when he fell down steps at Didsbury Church. His personal diaries were published in 1934.
Joseph Constantine Stadler was a prolific German émigré engraver of images after his contemporaries. His engravings are wide-ranging in subject matter and include landscapes, seascapes and portraits, as well as military, sporting and decorative subjects. Stadler was employed by the leading print publisher of the time, John Boydell (1720-1804). On 23 March 1799 Stadler married Ann Elizabeth Sandman at St Anne’s Church, Soho, in London. He was living in Knightsbridge when he died at the age of 73.

Places

England, London

Subjects

rowing boat, topography, townscape/cityscape, smoke, river bank, river, neo-Classical, government building, church, spire, chimney, sailboat, oar

Materials & Techniques

aquatint, coloured aquatint

Artist

Joseph Farington (1747 - 1821)
Joseph Constantine Stadler (1755 - 1828)

Title

View of Somerset Place, including the Adelphi, etc

Date

published 1 January 1791

Medium

Coloured aquatint

Acquisition

Purchased from Parker Gallery, March 1965

GAC number

6904