Design for a Chimney Piece in the Gallery, now DIning Room, Harewood House, Yorkshire (Elevation)

Robert Adam

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Robert Adam is mainly known as one of Great-Britain’s most important historic architects, but he also concerned himself with the interior of many buildings and made an important mark as an interior designer. He designed this fireplace for Harewood House (Yorkshire), a country estate built for Edward Lascelles, first Baron of Harewood. With its two caryatids supporting the mantle, it follows a design which was very popular in the Neo-Classical period. Robert Adam used it various times, giving the female sculptures different postures and combining them with other reliefs and ornaments based on examples from Roman and Greek Antiquity.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art