Object Type
This drawing was prepared for publication as an engraving. It was reproduced exactly in The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Volume III, plate II, published in 1822, some 30 years after Adam's death. However, neither the draughtsman's nor the engraver's names are recorded.

Places
This illustration of the gallery at Syon House illustrates what is regarded as the essential Adam style. It is delicate, yet so decorated that few surfaces are left unadorned. Individual elements of the decoration, such as the plasterwork panels, and the figure medallions and ribbon bands on the ceiling, are all derived from a Classical tradition. It was this sort of architectural design that the Adam brothers described when they wrote in their introduction to volume I of The Works in Architecture (1773) of their 'beautiful variety of light mouldings, gracefully formed and delicately enriched'.

People
Syon House, just to the west of London, was an earlier house remodelled by Robert Adam (1728-1792) for Hugh Smithson, 1st Duke of Northumberland (1714-1786) in 1762. Northumberland's illegitimate son James Smithson wrote (in 1826) in his will that if his heirs should be without issue, his estate should be bequeathed to the USA, to set up the Smithsonian Institute. James died in 1829; his heir died childless in 1835.