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In 2023, I emailed 215 art-related items to supporters of my Sunday Recommendations list. This week: my favorites in architecture and museums. This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/a1XBBQGXRsM .

Architecture

Top picks (3, in no particular order)

• Adam, Robert. Syon House State Dining Room, Great Hall, and Long Gallery (1762-1769). It occurred to me that I didn’t have an image of the sort of rooms Jane Austen’s characters walk around in, or Georgette Heyer’s. This article has excellent photos of 5 rooms in Syon House, the London home of the Dukes of Northumberland. The house has been the ducal home for more than 400 years, almost since it it was built in the Italian Renaissance style on the site of medieval Syon Abbey. But now and then every grand old house needs an update. In the 1760s, Robert Adam was called in to freshen up five rooms. Robert Adam (1728-1792) and James Adam (1732-1794) were the most famous of a family of architects who are credited with creating the “Style of the Adam Brothers”. They insisted that interior and exterior design be integrated, and that interiors should have a unified scheme that included walls, ceilings, floors, furniture, and fixtures. Having traveled extensively to visit Roman ruins, Robert and James chose to promote the Neoclassical style over the then-fashionable Baroque and Rococo. But they also introduced curved walls, domes, elaborate plasterwork, and bright colors.

As Sutton puts it: “Adam created rooms that had never been seen before – rich, delicate, ingeniously shaped, articulated by such devices as columnar screens across apses, moulded pilasters, mirrors, and plasterwork on walls and ceilings” (Western Architecture, p. 241). In the 1770s, Robert and James published an illustrated book of their designs that made their work known throughout Europe. The Adams Style was popular from the 1760s to the mid-1790s for upper-and middle-class residences in England, Scotland, Russia, and the United States (where it was known as the Federal Style). Jane Austen heroines would certainly have seen interiors resembling these, if somewhat less elaborate. For more on the building boom in England during the Industrial Revolution that helped the Adam brothers prosper, see here.

• Lutyens, Edwin, and Gertrude Jekyll. Gardens at Hestercombe House (1904-1906). Hestercombe House dates to the early 16th c., but its current gorgeous garden is Edwardian – the work of a partnership by two leading participants in the Arts and Crafts movement. Lutyens was a highly respected architect of English country houses and public buildings in the traditional style. At Hestercombe, he designed the bold shapes that give the garden its structure. Jekyll, who developed the planting strategy, was famous for her use of color and texture, which were influenced by J.M.W. Turner and the Impressionists. Indeed, Jekyll was chiefly interested in painting until her eyesight began to fail in the 1890s – at that point, she switched to gardening.

• Adler, Dankmar, and Louis H. Sullivan. Trading Room of the Chicago Stock Exchange (1893-1894). Main trading room from the home of the Chicago Stock Exchange. When the Adler & Sullivan Exchange was demolished in 1972, this room was relocated to the Art Institute of Chicago. Sullivan designed one building at the 1893 Columbian Exposition: the Transportation Building, whose arch is very reminiscent of the entrances to the Stock Exchange. It was one of the few major structures at the Exposition that was not designed in the classical style – but like all the others, it has long since been demolished.

Runners-up: 3 works

• Fu, Tim. “Future Nouveau” house design (2023?). I love Art Nouveau, but I’m sure the originators (ca. 1890-1910) were never able to conceive something like Tim Fu did with Midjourney + Dalle2/SD Post-processing. More photos in this article.

• Walpole, Horace. Strawberry Hill (1749-1797). In 1757, a mere two years after Winckelmann’s famous essay promoting Greek sculpture, Edmund Burke published A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Burke was the first to distinguish the beautiful (well-formed, pleasing) from the sublime (which he says has power to compel and destroy us, to overtake the rational mind and trigger self-examination). Burke’s essay is one of the roots of the Romantic movement in painting. In architecture, Romanticism takes the form of imitation of earlier styles, often (as here) Gothic cathedrals and castles. In 1764 Horace Walpole – who designed and lived in Strawberry Hill – published one of the notable proto-Romantic novels, The Castle of Otranto. I can’t say I recommend it, but if you’re interested in the origins of Romanticism, it makes fascinating reading. (“And then the figure, turning slowly round, discovered to Frederic the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton, wrapt in a hermit’s cowl. ‘Angels of peace protect me!’ cried Frederic, recoiling. ‘Deserve their protection!’ said the spectre.”)

• Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House (1907-1934). The home / showcase of an interior designer in Gloucester, Massachusetts. See my blog posts on it: Part 1 & part 2. Three images of this house also turned up in Favorite Photos for 2023.

Museums

Top picks: 2 very different institutions

• Worcester Art Museum. I’ve done seven posts on European and American portraits there. I have so much more material … Who knew I’d visit so many fascinating museums this year, and fall behind on blog posts about them?

• Clark Art Institute, a great museum in the wilds of western Massachusetts. I’ve published six posts so far, covering favorite works from the 15th to 19th centuries. I plan to finish with 3 or 4 more in February.

Next week: Favorite Recommendations for 2023 in music, film, and decorative arts.

More

• A quick summary of what I did in 2023: At the Resurrecting Romanticism conference in Spartanburg, SC, in October 2023, I gave a talk on Romanticism and painting (1.25 hrs.) and another on painting at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago (.5 hours). I also participated in a panel discussion, “Nurturing the New Romantics”. These will eventually be available as videos. When they are, links will be on the Books & Essays page.
• Subscriptions from supporters are also helping me work on two books that will appear in 2024: Getting More Enjoyment from Paintings You Love (companion volume on sculpture here), and Timeline 1700-1900 (a prequel to Timeline 1900-2021).
• For my writings in 2022 and earlier, see the Books and Essays page. All my books are available in Kindle and/or print format via my Amazon author page, and via Ingram at major booksellers such as Barnes and Noble. And check out dozens of videos on my YouTube channel.
• For favorites recommendations from earlier years, see the Favorite Recommendations and Photos link.
• Want wonderful art such as these recommendations delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my Sunday Recommendations list: details here.