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Fife House, Whitehall, London: designs for interior decoration, for James Duff, 2nd Earl of Fife, 1766-67 (4)

Signed and dated

  • 1766-67

Notes

James Duff, 2nd Earl of Fife (1729-1809), was the son of William Duff, Lord Braco of Kilbryde (created Earl of Fife in 1759 - an Irish peerage), and succeeded his father in 1763. In 1759 he married Lady Dorothea Sinclair, daughter and heir of Alexander Sinclair, 9th Earl of Caithness. This was an unhappy marriage, culminating in Dorothea attempting to shoot her husband, and a legal separation. They had no children, and the Earldom passed to a nephew, also James Duff. The 2nd Earl served as MP for Banffshire in 1754-84, and Elginshire in 1784-90. His political career in the House of Commons was brought to an end when he was given an English peerage, being created Baron Duff of Fife in 1790. His lengthy political career can account for the necessity of a magnificent town house in Whitehall. He spent the majority of his time, however, in Aberdeen and Moray where he extended his lands, established a model farm, served as Lord Lieutenant of Banff in 1795-1809, and cared for his tenants, at considerable personal cost, during the failed harvest of 1782-83.

Fife House had been substantially altered, or rebuilt, for the 2nd Earl in 1756-57 to designs by John Woolfe (d.1793). Then in 1766 Adam was employed to make designs for the interior, executing unidentified designs he made for the great room. The 2nd Earl's maternal uncle was Sir Ludovic Grant, 6th Baronet, who had been Adam's patron at Moy House, Moray in 1759. It may have been through this connection that Adam came to the 2nd Earl's attention.

In 1809 repairs and alterations were made to Fife House by John Soane (1753-1837), and the house was demolished in 1869.

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, index pp. 51, 71; D. King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume I, p. 423; 'Duff, Hon. James (1729-1809), of Duff House, Banff. And Mar Lodge, Aberdeen', History of Parliament online

Frances Sands, 2012

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Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

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Contents of Fife House, Whitehall, London: designs for interior decoration, for James Duff, 2nd Earl of Fife, 1766-67 (4)