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Stanhope Street, number 9, London: unexecuted design for a ceiling for the drawing room for the 2nd Earl of Clanbrassil, 1769 (1)

Signed and dated

  • 1769

Notes

James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Clanbrassil (1730-98), succeeded his father, the 1st Earl, in 1758. Being a member of the Irish peerage he was eligible for a seat in the House of Commons, and he served as MP for Helston in 1768-74. He was also the High Sherriff of Louth in 1757, and Chief Remembrancer of the Court of Exchequer in 1757-98. In 1774 he married Grace, the eldest daughter of Thomas Foley, afterwards 2nd Baron Foley, another of Adam's patrons who commissioned a single, unexecuted, ceiling for his house, in Portland Place in 1762.

During his time in London, Clanbrassil made use of a town house at 9 Stanhope Street. For this house he commissioned Robert Adam to make a design to redecorate the drawing room ceiling in 1769. This was not executed, possibly owing to the considerable debts Clanbrassil had inherited from his father. Little is known of this house as it has since been demolished.

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index pp. 51, 66; B. Weinreb, and C. Hibbert, The London encyclopaedia, 1983, p. 834; The History of Parliament online: 'Hamilton, James, 2nd Earl of Clanbrassil (1730-98), of Dundalk, co. Louth'

Frances Sands, 2013

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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 Stanhope Street, number 9, London: unexecuted design for a ceiling for the drawing room for the 2nd Earl of Clanbrassil, 1769 (1)