Dr Richard Warren FRS, FSA (1731-97), was the third son of Revd Dr Richard Warren, archdeacon of Suffolk, and rector of Cavendish in the same county. He acquired his MD in 1762, first working as a tutor at Jesus College, Cambridge to the son of Dr Peter Shaw, physician-in-ordinary to King George II and King George III. Warren married Shaw's daughter, Elizabeth in 1759, and succeeded him as physician-in-ordinary to George III in 1763. In the same year Warren was also elected as a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He also worked at the Middlesex and St George's hospitals. By the 1780s he was the most fashionable society physician of the time, and during George III's illness of 1788 he earned a considerable fortune.

Warren lived on Dover Street, London, where he died in 1797, and it was presumably for this house that he commissioned Robert Adam in 1775-76 to make designs for interior decoration. The surviving drawings show designs for a ceiling, frieze and mirror frame for the drawing room, and lamps for the eating room and staircase. None of these designs are known to have been executed.

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index pp. 58, 90; E. Harris, The furniture of Robert Adam, 1963, Index p. 59; D. King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume II, p. 179; Oxford dictionary of national biography online: 'Warren, Richard (1731-97)'

Frances Sands, 2013