Music Room at Harewood House

Adam’s bright colour palette was also inspired in part by the rediscovery of the vibrant colour palette of the ancient world. He was particlarly fond of pink and green together.

In Robert and his brother James Adam’s Works in Architecture, which first appeared in 1773, Robert writes: “Light tints of pink and green, so as to take the glare off the white, so common in every ceiling and side walls with their hangings, pictures and other decorations.”

The combination is best seen at Harewood in the Music Room. Here a flat plaster ceiling decorated with low-relief arabesques and geometric motifs incorporates small round classical paintings thought to be by Angelica Kauffman; these medallions are exactly reflected in the Axminster carpet below, harmonising with the pink and green decorative scheme.

Even the other furnishings incorporate elements of the same motifs: the Chippendale tables repeat the bellflower swags of ceiling and carpet, and the geometric curved inlay echoes the circles and lines of the plaster mouldings.

This room is one of the most ‘complete’ Adam interiors within the house (many others having been modified by Sir Charles Barry in the 19th century).

Celadon green in Georgian interiors

Throughout the house Adam introduced intricate and subtly contrasting areas of colour into wall and ceiling decoration with pale green one of his default colours.

Green is another colour seen not just in Harewood’s interiors but in its porcelain. Chinese porcelain has been highly prized by European collectors since it was first traded in Europe in the early 1500s. Harewood’s collection was acquired by Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles in the late 18th century. Many of his pieces are decorated with gilt-bronze mounts that were added in France and England to appeal to the European taste for gilded decoration.

China’s celadons are the world’s oldest style of high-fired glaze. They emerged in China’s Bronze Age when white-hot wood ash in the kiln fused onto the wares’ surfaces. Their distinctive grey-green colours derive from iron oxides in both ashes and clays.

Chinese goods were highly fashionable in Europe in the 18th century and some of the bedrooms at Harewood were hung with hand-painted Chinese wallpapers imported via the East India Company.

Paper conservator Allyson McDermott, said: “The 18th-century Chinese pigments were made from semi- precious stones including azurite (blue) and malachite (green) giving a depth of colour unfaded by time. There are also rare organic purples, deep crimson reds made from crushed cochineal beetles and whites from the shells of oysters.

Bold yellow

Of all the primary colours, yellow is the one that seems least used by the Georgians (apart from at Harewood). One reason may have been the jarring effect it had on the gilt frames of the paintings which hung against it which was said to kill the picture.

In one famous outburst from Mrs Arbuthnot, writing about the Duke of Wellington’s plans for the Waterloo Gallery at Apsley House, she wrote: “He is going to hang it with yellow damask, which is just the very worst colour he can have for pictures and will kill the effect of the gilding. However he will have to have it.”

Another homeowner determined on the same scheme was Harewood’s Edwin Lascelles who purchased yellow silks for Drawing Room walls. One reason may be the colour, like the more expensive bright blues, greens and reds, it signalled rarity and richness. Yellow was also the colour of the Chinese emperor becoming a symbol of power in the Western world too.

The use of yellow was most likely to the frustration of Adam, who had originally envisaged another pink and green scheme for the room, like the Music Room, evident from the mismatched pink and green colour palette of the original Axminster carpet (which had clearly been put into production before this last-minute change of plan).