James 'Athenian' Stuart (1713–1788)

Engraved portrait of James 'Athenian' Stuart, by WC Edwards after a painting by Richard Brettingham, 18th century, England, UK. Museum no. 22921

'Antiquities of Athens', by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, 1762. Courtesy of the Library, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York

'Artists who aim at perfection must … approach the Fountain-Head of their art'
James 'Athenian' Stuart

James 'Athenian' Stuart is a compelling figure in the history of British design. Widely recognised for his central role in pioneering Neo-Classicism, Stuart developed his influential career across various fields: interior decoration, sculpture, furnishing, metalwork and architecture.

The creation of the 'Greek Style' and its impact on British design in the late 18th century is largely due to Stuart's landmark publication Antiquities of Athens. This influential book, first published 1762, was the first accurate record of Classical Greek architecture and served as a principal source book for architects and designers well into the 19th century.

Early years & artistic training

James Stuart was born in London in 1713, the son of a Scottish sailor whose death left his young family in poverty. A talented artist even as a child, Stuart was apprenticed to a fan painter.

In about 1742 he set off on foot to Italy, intent on improving his artistic skills. Here Stuart worked as a painter and guide to antiquities (or cicerone) while studying art and architecture and also learning Italian, Latin and Greek.

A major work during these years was his De Obelisco, an illustrated treatise on the Egyptian obelisk of Psammetichus II.

Journey to Greece

In 1751 Stuart and his friend Nicholas Revett visited Greece to measure and record antiquities. Detailed scholarly studies of Roman ruins already existed, but this attempt to apply the same approach to Greek remains was new. Stuart and Revett's intention was to increase the repertoire of correct decorative and architectural elements from the classical past, while also making a reputation for themselves.

Antiquities of Athens

After their return to London in 1755, Stuart worked on the first volume of Antiquities of Athens, which was published in 1762. He wrote and revised the text, had the illustrations engraved and designed a binding, as well as painting views of Greece and Pola in gouache for exhibition. The first volume contained details of just five buildings in the northern part of Athens, but more were promised in further volumes.

The first volume had more than 500 subscribers. Few were architects or builders, which limited the impact of the work as a design sourcebook. It was, however, well received by scholars, antiquaries and gentleman amateurs. The presentation binding that Stuart designed for Antiquities of Athens had a Neo-Classical design and inspired architect Robert Adam to design similar presentation bindings for his work on the antiquities of Spalatro.

Antiquities of Athens helped shape the European understanding of ancient Greece. It brought an entirely new design vocabulary to 18th-century European architecture and design, and later became an essential sourcebook for the 19th-century Greek Revival.

Paintings for exhibition

After his return to London in 1755, Stuart painted views of Greece and Pola (now Pula) in Croatia. These paintings were executed in gouache, a type of opaque watercolour, and were painted for exhibition. A selection of them can be seen below.

In some of the images, Stuart included himself and Nicholas Revett, his friend and traveling partner,in the scenes. This was one of the devices Stuart used in several of his views to call attention to their actual presence in Greece.

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  View of the Arch of the Sergii at Pola, James Stuart

  View of the Arch of the Sergii at Pola
  James Stuart
  1750s–60s
  Gouache
  © RIBA Library Drawings Collection
  www.ribapix.com

  On his way  to Athens, Stuart and Revett visited Pola (now Pula) in Croatia. At the Arch of the Sergii (Porta Aurata), Stuart depicted himself taking notes while Revett measured the monument. Both of them, with an assistant, are perched precariously on top of the arch.

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  View of the Ionic temple on the River Ilissus near Athens, James Stuart

  View of the Ionic temple on the River Ilissus near Athens
  James Stuart
  1750s–60s
  Gouache
  © RIBA Library Drawings Collection
  www.ribapix.com

  The Ionic order, one of the three styles of classical architecture, of the temple on the River Ilissus was considered to be one of the finest in existence. It was later widely imitated by Greek Revival architects. Stuart’s paintings are of particular importance as the Turks destroyed the building in about 1778. By the time he visited, the temple had been converted to a church.

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  Gouache view of the Theatre of Bacchus, Athens James Stuart

  View of the Theatre of Bacchus, Athens
  James Stuart
  1750s–60s
  Gouache
  © RIBA Library Drawings Collection
  www.ribapix.com

  In the foreground of his view of the interior of the Theatre of Bacchus, Stuart depicted Nicholas Revett sketching. This was one of the devices Stuart used in several of his views to call attention to his and Revett’s actual presence in Greece. Revett is shown in Turkish dress, showing his immersion in the Ottoman culture that dominated 18th-century Athens.

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  View of the Tower of the Winds at Athens, James Stuart

  View of the Tower of the Winds at Athens
  James Stuart
  1750s–60s
  Gouache
  © RIBA Library Drawings Collection
  www.ribapix.com

  Wherever possible, Stuart and Revett excavated around monuments before sketching and measuring. Here, they got permission to remove flooring within the tower and to pull down a house that abutted the structure so they could gain access to all eight sides of the building. The tower would become one of the most imitated of all of their Athenian monuments.

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  View of the Monument of Philopappus at Athens, James Stuart

  View of the Monument of Philopappus at Athens
  James Stuart
  1750s–60s
  Gouache
  © RIBA Library Drawings Collection
  www.ribapix.com

  This view shows Stuart and Revett with two British travellers, Robert Wood and James Dawkins, who visited Athens in 1751. Stuart depicted himself and Revett wearing Turkish caftans, talking to Dawkins while Wood took down inscriptions. Dawkins’s financial support was essential to Stuart and Revett’s Athenian project.

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  View of the Caryatid Porch, the Erechtheion

  View of the Caryatid Porch, the Erechtheion, the west end of the Temple of Minerva Polias and the  Pandrosium on the Acropolis, Athens
  James Stuart
  1750s–60s
  Gouache
  © RIBA Library Drawings Collection
  www.ribapix.com

  In this complex view, Stuart depicted himself sketching in the foreground while his labourers excavated the base of the monument under the watch of Turkish spies from the porch. According to Stuart, the two pipe-smoking men were high-ranking Turkish officials who policed the site so that Stuart and Revett would not carry away treasure.

Kedleston Hall, design for the decoration of the end wall in a state room, James Stuart, 1757-8. Courtesy of Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, The Scarsdale Collection (The National Trust), © NTPL / John Hammond

Gilt-bronze perfume burner on marble plinth, designed by James Stuart, made by Diederich Nicolaus Anderson, London, England, about 1760. Museum no. M.46:1-1948

Carved and gilded limewood settee, designed by James Stuart, London, England, 1759-65. Museum no. W.3-1977

Country houses

Stuart's work as an architect grew out of his reputation as a painter, connoisseur and authority on Greece. Wealthy patrons employed him for his skill as a designer but also for his judgement in matters of taste.

He only built one complete country house, Belvedere in Kent. Instead, most of his work outside London consisted of alterations to existing houses and villas. Compact buildings near large towns, villas were used by their fashion-conscious owners for hospitality and display. For these projects, Stuart drew on his first-hand experience of Greek and Roman remains to design some of the earliest Neo-classical interiors in Britain.

For example, Stuart created two designs for the end walls of a state room in Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire. In one design the recess contains a portrait of Curzon, the owner of the Kedleston estate, and his wife. They are positioned above a Neo-classical sideboard table  which is flanked by scroll-footed pedestals with griffins, which were a prototype of Stuart's later designs for torchères at Spencer House.

In the second wall design, pictured here, Stuart depicted a temple-like structure, possibly intended to be an organ case with a canopy. Stuart must have meant to complete the central painting himself, as the figures of Bacchus and the lion and attendants were taken from the frieze of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, Athens.

Furnishings

For many of these commissions, Stuart designed furniture and metalware. These are eclectic in design. Fusing Baroque forms with elements taken from early French Neo-classicism, they also include direct copies of Greek and Roman ornament and furniture types.

This tripod perfume burner is one of Stuart's most important and enduring designs. It is is based on his sketch of a reconstruction of the tripod that once stood on the roof of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. On his return to London, Stuart revived this tripod form, which appears as a decorative object in his drawings dating from as early as 1757.

Tripods would become a standard part of the Neo-classical repertoire, but this one by Stuart appears to be the first made in metal since ancient times.

The seat furniture Stuart created for the Painted Room at Spencer House combined elements from a wide variety of sources. The animal-leg supports for both the armchairs and the settees derived from ancient seating forms. The settees were among the earliest Neo-classical style furniture in Britain.

In the mid to late 18th-century, architects such as Stuart began to focus on furniture as an integral part of a room's decorative scheme. The curved back of this settee, for example, was designed specifically to fit into the curved apse of the painted room.

Hagley Hall, Worcestershire, painted ceiling of the Tapestry Room (detail), James Stuart and Giovanni Battista Cipriani, 1758-9. Photographed in 2006

Hagley Hall, detail of one of the four 'zephyrs' on the painted ceiling of the Tapestry Room, James Stuart, 1758-9. Photographed in 2006

Organ case at Newby Hall, James Stuart, About 1767. Photographed in 2006, courtesy of Mr Richard Compton, Newby Hall Estate, Yorkshire

The Doric Temple, Shugborough, James Stuart, 1760. Courtesy of Shugborough, Staffordshire (The National Trust)

The Temple of the Winds, Mount Stewart, Co. Down, James Stuart, about 1782-3. Courtesy of Mount Stewart, County Down (The National Trust), © NTPL

Stairwell with coffered dome, James Stuart, about 1782-3. Courtesy of Mount Stewart, County Down (The National Trust), © NTPL

The upper room, The Temple of the Winds, Mount Stewart, James Stuart, about 1782-3. Courtesy of Mount Stewart, County Down (The National Trust), © NTPL

Town houses

In the 18th century, rich families increasingly spent part of the year in London. The houses that they built were not merely spaces for living, but also an opportunity for entertaining and display. Their lavish interiors were an expression of taste and education as well as wealth.

Stuart's reputation as a man of learning and an authority on classical art and design enabled him to exploit the opportunities that arose in this flourishing market. He provided interior designs and built town town houses, using Greek architectural elements that had never been seen before by the London public. Some examples of his work,including the exterior of 15 St. James's Square and the interior of Lichfield house, can be seen below.

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  Front elevation, 15 St James's Square

  Front elevation
  15 St James's Square, London
  James Stuart
  1764-6
  Photographed in 2006

  The most distinctive of Stuart's London houses was Lichfield House, built for Thomas Anson. Stuart called the capitals on the façade 'the greatest grace and ornament of the building'. They were copies of the capitals of the portico of Minerva Polias in Athens. This was the first time the Greek Ionic order had been used in a London building.

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  Antiquities of Athens, vol 2

  Antiquities of Athens, volume 2
  James Stuart and Nicholas Revett
  About 1790
  Published in London by John Nichols
  Courtesy of the Library, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York
  © BGC / Bruce White

  This opening shows the Ionic order of the portico of Minerva Polias, which Stuart used in the main elevation of Lichfield House.

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  'Drawings…Collected cheifly [sic] from Noble-mens Houses', John Carter

  'Drawings…Collected cheifly [sic] from Noble-mens Houses'
  John Carter
  1766
  Pen and ink, ink wash
  Museum no. D.386-1890

  The boudoir ceiling at Holdernesse House was similar to others that Stuart designed for Montagu House and Belvedere House. A visiting architect, John Carter, sketched a portion of the ceiling ornament in 1766. Carter made twenty-one drawings of the ornamental details of the house. These serve as the only record of several rooms lost in a later rebuilding.

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  Music room, Lichfield House

  Music room, Lichfield House
  James Stuart
  1764-6
  Altered by Samuel Wyatt
  1791-4
  Courtesy of City of London, London Metropolitan Archives

  The ceiling of the music room at Lichfield House is comparable to the boudoir ceiling at Holdernesse House in its basic pattern: a deep cove surrounding a flat area framed by a beamlike rib. Unlike at Holdernesse House, however, there is no coffering, and the residual spaces are filled by shallow arabesques.

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  Main drawing room, Lichfield House

  Main drawing room, Lichfield House
  James Stuart
  1764-6
  Ceiling panels painted by Biagio Rebecca, 1794
  Photographed in 1958
  Courtesy of City of London, London Metropolitan Archives

  Throughout his career Stuart tended to reuse successful designs with only minor modifications. The ceiling of the first-floor front room at Lichfield House is very similar to the central section of the drawing room at Holdernesse House.

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  Chimneypiece in the main drawing room, Lichfield house

  Chimneypiece in the main drawing room
  Lichfield house
  James Stuart
  1764-6
  Carving attributed to the Scheemakers workshop
  Photographed in 1958
  Courtesy of City of London, London Metropolitan Archives

  The white marble chimneypiece in the main drawing room is almost identical to that in the Great Room at Spencer House, with its figures of Bacchus and the lion taken from the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. At Lichfield House, however, the masks on the capitals are female, rather than Apollonian.

Public commissions

Chapel, interior, looking towards the organ James Stuart, assisted by Robert Mylne and William Newton, 1779-89. Courtesy of James Brittain/ The Greenwich Foundation, © The Greenwich Foundation/ James Brittain

Chapel interior, ceiling detail, Royal Hospital, Greenwich, James Stuart, assisted by Robert Mylne and William Newton, 1779-89. Courtesy of James Brittain/ the Greenwich Foundation, © The Greenwich Foundation/ James Brittain

Chapel interior, Royal Hospital, Greenwich, James Stuart, c.1779- 1789, Albumen print, c.1890. Courtesy of the Library, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, New York, © Bruce White, 2006

Antiquities of Athens, vol 2, James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, about 1790. Courtesy of the Library, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York, © BGC / Bruce White

Drawing of a monument to Thomas Bentley, James Stuart, about 1780. Museum no. 8408.9a

Books & engravings

Much of Stuart’s fame rests on his role as author and illustrator of Antiquities of Athens; his reputation as an architect and designer has fluctuated with time and fashion. But Stuart was also involved in other publications. After his return to London in 1754 he accepted commissions to produce illustrations for various books, which he exhibited at the Free Society of Artists. These plates were different from those in Antiquities, as they were allegorical in character or depicted events that Stuart had not witnessed at first hand.

Medals

James Stuart designed at least twenty medals, many for the Society for the Promotion of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, also known as the Society of Arts. Stuart and his patrons used the design of these medals not just to promote patriotism, but also as a propaganda tool to influence public opinion and advance a particular political agenda.

Adapting the imagery of classical coinage to celebrate British military, artistic and scientific accomplishments, Stuart made an explicit visual link between the achievements of the Roman and the British empires. This was especially the case with the series of medals commissioned by the Society of Arts to commemorate British victories during the Seven Years' War.

Monuments

In his designs for memorials and monuments Stuart used many of the traditional motifs of 18th-century funerary art, such as sarcophagi, portrait busts, grieving women, putti and obelisks. He was innovative in other ways. His versions of funerary sarcophagi, for example, were specifically Greek, after a model he had sketched for Antiquities of Athens. He was also one of the first designers to use low-relief portrait medallions in monuments instead of the more customary portrait busts.

In his monument designs, Stuart worked closely and almost exclusively with the father and son sculptors Peter and Thomas Scheemakers. This collaboration took place at a time when the standing of stone carvers was rising, and individual sculptors were beginning to lay claim to the status of liberal artists in their own right. The Scheemakers exploited their alliance with Stuart to enhance their reputations.

The next generation of sculptors also owed Stuart a debt. Antiquities of Athens had made available a vast collection of classical ornament, which sculptors could use without the intervention of an architect or designer.

Later years & legacy

Portrait medallion of James Stuart, Wedgwood and Bentley, after 1777. The Wedgwood Museum Trust, Barlaston, Staffordshire

From the late 1760s complaints began to surface about Stuart's increasingly chaotic business practices, which were possibly due to his chronic gout and deteriorating health. The problem worsened, and by the early 1780s even his friends noted that he spent his afternoons drinking and playing skittles rather than attending to business. His critics, meanwhile, accused him of 'Epicurianism' – a reference to his recent marriage to a young maidservant as well as to his alcoholism.

However, Stuart continued to work intermittently and also returned to the Antiquities of Athens. This was unfinished at the time of his death in 1788 and the final volume only appeared in 1816, when the Greek Revival was beginning to dominate British architecture. Stuart's London buildings had played a role in the propagation of Neo-classical taste, but it was the Antiquities of Athens that had the greatest impact. As a sourcebook it influenced architects, sculptors and designers in Europe and America for the next two centuries.

Stuart was friends with the potter Josiah Wedgwood and this friendship resulted in several collaborative commissions over the years. Wedgwood had a high regard for Stuart and honoured him in this this portrait medallion, as one of the 'Illustrious Moderns', in a series of Wedgwood portrait busts from the 1770s.

This text was originally written to accompany the  first comprehensive retrospective of Stuart's work, on display at the V&A South Kensington between March and June 2007. The exhibition was organised by the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, New York in cooperation with the V&A.