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General linear group

In mathematics, the general linear group of degree n is the set of n×n invertible matrices, together with the operation of ordinary matrix multiplication. This forms a group, because the product of two invertible matrices is again invertible, and the inverse of an invertible matrix is invertible, with the identity matrix as the identity element of the group. The group is so named because the columns (and also the rows) of an invertible matrix are linearly independent, hence the vectors/points they define are in general linear position, and matrices in the general linear group take points in general linear position to points in general linear position.

To be more precise, it is necessary to specify what kind of objects may appear in the entries of the matrix. For example, the general linear group over R (the set of real numbers) is the group of n×n invertible matrices of real numbers, and is denoted by GLn(R) or GL(n, R).

More generally, the general linear group of degree n over any field F (such as the complex numbers), or a ring R (such as the ring of integers), is the set of n×n invertible matrices with entries from F (or R), again with matrix multiplication as the group operation. Typical notation is GLn(F) or GL(n, F), or simply GL(n) if the field is understood.

More generally still, the general linear group of a vector space GL(V) is the automorphism group, not necessarily written as matrices.

The special linear group, written SL(n, F) or SLn(F), is the subgroup of GL(n, F) consisting of matrices with a determinant of 1.

The group GL(n, F) and its subgroups are often called linear groups or matrix groups (the automorphism group GL(V) is a linear group but not a matrix group). These groups are important in the theory of group representations, and also arise in the study of spatial symmetries and symmetries of vector spaces in general, as well as the study of polynomials. The modular group may be realised as a quotient of the special linear group SL(2, Z).

If n ≥ 2, then the group GL(n, F) is not abelian.

General linear group of a vector space
If V is a vector space over the field F, the general linear group of V, written GL(V) or Aut(V), is the group of all automorphisms of V, i.e. the set of all bijective linear transformations V → V, together with functional composition as group operation. If V has finite dimension n, then GL(V) and GL(n, F) are isomorphic. The isomorphism is not canonical; it depends on a choice of basis in V. Given a basis (e1, ..., en) of V and an automorphism T in GL(V), we have then for every basis vector ei that
 * $$T(e_i) = \sum_{j=1}^n a_{ji} e_j$$

for some constants aij in F; the matrix corresponding to T is then just the matrix with entries given by the aji.

In a similar way, for a commutative ring R the group GL(n, R) may be interpreted as the group of automorphisms of a free R-module M of rank n. One can also define GL(M) for any R-module, but in general this is not isomorphic to GL(n, R) (for any n).

In terms of determinants
Over a field F, a matrix is invertible if and only if its determinant is nonzero. Therefore, an alternative definition of GL(n, F) is as the group of matrices with nonzero determinant.

Over a commutative ring R, more care is needed: a matrix over R is invertible if and only if its determinant is a unit in R, that is, if its determinant is invertible in R. Therefore, GL(n, R) may be defined as the group of matrices whose determinants are units.

Over a non-commutative ring R, determinants are not at all well behaved. In this case, GL(n, R) may be defined as the unit group of the matrix ring M(n, R).

Real case
The general linear group GL(n, R) over the field of real numbers is a real Lie group of dimension n2. To see this, note that the set of all n×n real matrices, Mn(R), forms a real vector space of dimension n2. The subset GL(n, R) consists of those matrices whose determinant is non-zero. The determinant is a polynomial map, and hence GL(n, R) is an open affine subvariety of Mn(R) (a non-empty open subset of Mn(R) in the Zariski topology), and therefore a smooth manifold of the same dimension.

The Lie algebra of GL(n, R), denoted $$\mathfrak{gl}_n,$$ consists of all n×n real matrices with the commutator serving as the Lie bracket.

As a manifold, GL(n, R) is not connected but rather has two connected components: the matrices with positive determinant and the ones with negative determinant. The identity component, denoted by GL+(n, R), consists of the real n×n matrices with positive determinant. This is also a Lie group of dimension n2; it has the same Lie algebra as GL(n, R).

The polar decomposition, which is unique for invertible matrices, shows that there is a homeomorphism between GL(n, R) and the Cartesian product of O(n) with the set of positive-definite symmetric matrices. Similarly, it shows that there is a homeomorphism between GL+(n, R) and the Cartesian product of SO(n) with the set of positive-definite symmetric matrices. Because the latter is contractible, the fundamental group of GL+(n, R) is isomorphic to that of SO(n).

The homeomorphism also shows that the group GL(n, R) is noncompact. “The” maximal compact subgroup of GL(n, R) is the orthogonal group O(n), while "the" maximal compact subgroup of GL+(n, R) is the special orthogonal group SO(n). As for SO(n), the group GL+(n, R) is not simply connected (except when n = 1), but rather has a fundamental group isomorphic to Z for n = 2 or Z2 for n > 2.

Complex case
The general linear group over the field of complex numbers, GL(n, C), is a complex Lie group of complex dimension n2. As a real Lie group (through realification) it has dimension 2n2. The set of all real matrices forms a real Lie subgroup. These correspond to the inclusions
 * GL(n, R) < GL(n, C) < GL(2n, R),

which have real dimensions n2, 2n2, and 4n2 = (2n)2. Complex n-dimensional matrices can be characterized as real 2n-dimensional matrices that preserve a linear complex structure — concretely, that commute with a matrix J such that J2 = −I, where J corresponds to multiplying by the imaginary unit i.

The Lie algebra corresponding to GL(n, C) consists of all n×n complex matrices with the commutator serving as the Lie bracket.

Unlike the real case, GL(n, C) is connected. This follows, in part, since the multiplicative group of complex numbers C∗ is connected. The group manifold GL(n, C) is not compact; rather its maximal compact subgroup is the unitary group U(n). As for U(n), the group manifold GL(n, C) is not simply connected but has a fundamental group isomorphic to Z.

Over finite fields
If F is a finite field with q elements, then we sometimes write GL(n, q) instead of GL(n, F). When p is prime, GL(n, p) is the outer automorphism group of the group Z$p$$n$, and also the automorphism group, because Z$p$$n$ is abelian, so the inner automorphism group is trivial.

The order of GL(n, q) is:
 * $$\prod_{k=0}^{n-1}(q^n-q^k)=(q^n - 1)(q^n - q)(q^n - q^2)\ \cdots\ (q^n - q^{n-1}).$$

This can be shown by counting the possible columns of the matrix: the first column can be anything but the zero vector; the second column can be anything but the multiples of the first column; and in general, the kth column can be any vector not in the linear span of the first k − 1 columns. In q-analog notation, this is $$[n]_q!(q-1)^n q^{n \choose 2}$$.

For example, GL(3, 2) has order (8 − 1)(8 − 2)(8 − 4) = 168. It is the automorphism group of the Fano plane and of the group Z$2$$3$, and is also known as PSL(2, 7).

More generally, one can count points of Grassmannian over F: in other words the number of subspaces of a given dimension k. This requires only finding the order of the stabilizer subgroup of one such subspace and dividing into the formula just given, by the orbit-stabilizer theorem.

These formulas are connected to the Schubert decomposition of the Grassmannian, and are q-analogs of the Betti numbers of complex Grassmannians. This was one of the clues leading to the Weil conjectures.

Note that in the limit q ↦ 1 the order of GL(n, q) goes to 0! – but under the correct procedure (dividing by (q − 1)n) we see that it is the order of the symmetric group (See Lorscheid's article) – in the philosophy of the field with one element, one thus interprets the symmetric group as the general linear group over the field with one element: Sn ≅ GL(n, 1).

History
The general linear group over a prime field, GL(ν, p), was constructed and its order computed by Évariste Galois in 1832, in his last letter (to Chevalier) and second (of three) attached manuscripts, which he used in the context of studying the Galois group of the general equation of order pν.

Special linear group
The special linear group, SL(n, F), is the group of all matrices with determinant 1. They are special in that they lie on a subvariety – they satisfy a polynomial equation (as the determinant is a polynomial in the entries). Matrices of this type form a group as the determinant of the product of two matrices is the product of the determinants of each matrix. SL(n, F) is a normal subgroup of GL(n, F).

If we write F× for the multiplicative group of F (excluding 0), then the determinant is a group homomorphism
 * det: GL(n, F) → F×.

that is surjective and its kernel is the special linear group. Therefore, by the first isomorphism theorem, GL(n, F)/SL(n, F) is isomorphic to F×. In fact, GL(n, F) can be written as a semidirect product:
 * GL(n, F) = SL(n, F) ⋊ F×

The special linear group is also the derived group (also known as commutator subgroup) of the GL(n, F) (for a field or a division ring F) provided that $$n \ne 2$$ or k is not the field with two elements.

When F is R or C, SL(n, F) is a Lie subgroup of GL(n, F) of dimension n2 − 1. The Lie algebra of SL(n, F) consists of all n×n matrices over F with vanishing trace. The Lie bracket is given by the commutator.

The special linear group SL(n, R) can be characterized as the group of volume and orientation-preserving linear transformations of Rn.

The group SL(n, C) is simply connected, while SL(n, R) is not. SL(n, R) has the same fundamental group as GL+(n, R), that is, Z for n = 2 and Z2 for n > 2.

Diagonal subgroups
The set of all invertible diagonal matrices forms a subgroup of GL(n, F) isomorphic to (F×)n. In fields like R and C, these correspond to rescaling the space; the so-called dilations and contractions.

A scalar matrix is a diagonal matrix which is a constant times the identity matrix. The set of all nonzero scalar matrices forms a subgroup of GL(n, F) isomorphic to F×. This group is the center of GL(n, F). In particular, it is a normal, abelian subgroup.

The center of SL(n, F) is simply the set of all scalar matrices with unit determinant, and is isomorphic to the group of nth roots of unity in the field F.

Classical groups
The so-called classical groups are subgroups of GL(V) which preserve some sort of bilinear form on a vector space V. These include the These groups provide important examples of Lie groups.
 * orthogonal group, O(V), which preserves a non-degenerate quadratic form on V,
 * symplectic group, Sp(V), which preserves a symplectic form on V (a non-degenerate alternating form),
 * unitary group, U(V), which, when F = C, preserves a non-degenerate hermitian form on V.

Projective linear group
The projective linear group PGL(n, F) and the projective special linear group PSL(n, F) are the quotients of GL(n, F) and SL(n, F) by their centers (which consist of the multiples of the identity matrix therein); they are the induced action on the associated projective space.

Affine group
The affine group Aff(n, F) is an extension of GL(n, F) by the group of translations in Fn. It can be written as a semidirect product:
 * Aff(n, F) = GL(n, F) ⋉ Fn

where GL(n, F) acts on Fn in the natural manner. The affine group can be viewed as the group of all affine transformations of the affine space underlying the vector space Fn.

One has analogous constructions for other subgroups of the general linear group: for instance, the special affine group is the subgroup defined by the semidirect product, SL(n, F) ⋉ Fn, and the Poincaré group is the affine group associated to the Lorentz group, O(1, 3, F) ⋉ Fn.

General semilinear group
The general semilinear group ΓL(n, F) is the group of all invertible semilinear transformations, and contains GL. A semilinear transformation is a transformation which is linear “up to a twist”, meaning “up to a field automorphism under scalar multiplication”. It can be written as a semidirect product:
 * ΓL(n, F) = Gal(F) ⋉ GL(n, F)

where Gal(F) is the Galois group of F (over its prime field), which acts on GL(n, F) by the Galois action on the entries.

The main interest of ΓL(n, F) is that the associated projective semilinear group PΓL(n, F) (which contains PGL(n, F)) is the collineation group of projective space, for n > 2, and thus semilinear maps are of interest in projective geometry.

Full linear monoid
The Full Linear Monoid, derived upon removal of the determinant's non-zero restriction, forms an algebraic structure akin to a monoid, often referred to as the full linear monoid or occasionally as the full linear semigroup or general linear monoid. Notably, it constitutes a regular semigroup. If one removes the restriction of the determinant being non-zero, the resulting algebraic structure is a monoid, usually called the full linear monoid,  but occasionally also full linear semigroup, general linear monoid  etc. It is actually a regular semigroup.

Infinite general linear group
The infinite general linear group or stable general linear group is the direct limit of the inclusions GL(n, F) → GL(n + 1, F) as the upper left block matrix. It is denoted by either GL(F) or GL(∞, F), and can also be interpreted as invertible infinite matrices which differ from the identity matrix in only finitely many places.

It is used in algebraic K-theory to define K1, and over the reals has a well-understood topology, thanks to Bott periodicity.

It should not be confused with the space of (bounded) invertible operators on a Hilbert space, which is a larger group, and topologically much simpler, namely contractible – see Kuiper's theorem.

title: General linear group


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John Constable

John Constable (11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home – now known as "Constable Country" – which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling".

Constable's most famous paintings include Wivenhoe Park (1816), Dedham Vale (1828) and The Hay Wain (1821). Although his paintings are now among the most popular and valuable in British art, he was never financially successful. He became a member of the establishment after he was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts at the age of 52. His work was embraced in France, where he sold more than in his native England and inspired the Barbizon school.

Early career
John Constable was born in East Bergholt, a village on the River Stour in Suffolk, to Golding and Ann (Watts) Constable. His father was a wealthy corn merchant, owner of Flatford Mill in East Bergholt and, later, Dedham Mill in Essex. Golding Constable owned a small ship, The Telegraph, which he moored at Mistley on the Stour estuary, and used to transport corn to London. He was a cousin of the London tea merchant, Abram Newman. Although Constable was his parents' second son, his older brother was intellectually disabled and John was expected to succeed his father in the business. After a brief period at a boarding school in Lavenham, he was enrolled in a day school in Dedham, Essex. Constable worked in the corn business after leaving school, but his younger brother Abram eventually took over the running of the mills.

In his youth, Constable embarked on amateur sketching trips in the surrounding Suffolk and Essex countryside, which was to become the subject of a large proportion of his art. These scenes, in his own words, "made me a painter, and I am grateful"; "the sound of water escaping from mill dams etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things." He was introduced to George Beaumont, a collector, who showed him his prized Hagar and the Angel by Claude Lorrain, which inspired Constable. Later, while visiting relatives in Middlesex, he was introduced to the professional artist John Thomas Smith, who advised him on painting but also urged him to remain in his father's business rather than take up art professionally.

In 1799, Constable persuaded his father to let him pursue a career in art, and Golding granted him a small allowance. Entering the Royal Academy Schools as a probationer, he attended life classes and anatomical dissections, and studied and copied old masters. Among works that particularly inspired him during this period were paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, Claude Lorrain, Peter Paul Rubens, Annibale Carracci and Jacob van Ruisdael. He also read widely among poetry and sermons, and later proved a notably articulate artist.

In 1802 he refused the position of drawing master at Great Marlow Military College (now Sandhurst), a move which Benjamin West (then master of the RA) counselled would mean the end of his career. In that year, Constable wrote a letter to John Dunthorne in which he spelled out his determination to become a professional landscape painter:

"For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand... I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men...There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth."

His early style has many qualities associated with his mature work, including a freshness of light, colour and touch, and reveals the compositional influence of the old masters he had studied, notably of Claude Lorrain. Constable's usual subjects, scenes of ordinary daily life, were unfashionable in an age that looked for more romantic visions of wild landscapes and ruins. He made occasional trips farther afield.

By 1803, he was exhibiting paintings at the Royal Academy. In April he spent almost a month aboard the East Indiaman Coutts as it visited south-east ports while sailing from London to Deal before leaving for China.

In 1806 Constable undertook a two-month tour of the Lake District. He told his friend and biographer, Charles Leslie, that the solitude of the mountains oppressed his spirits, and Leslie wrote:

"His nature was peculiarly social and could not feel satisfied with scenery, however grand in itself, that did not abound in human associations. He required villages, churches, farmhouses and cottages."

Constable adopted a routine of spending winter in London and painting at East Bergholt in summer. In 1811 he first visited John Fisher and his family in Salisbury, a city whose cathedral and surrounding landscape were to inspire some of his greatest paintings.

To make ends meet, Constable took up portraiture, which he found dull, though he executed many fine portraits. He also painted occasional religious pictures but, according to John Walker, "Constable's incapacity as a religious painter cannot be overstated." Another source of income was country house painting. In 1816, he was commissioned by Major-General Francis Slater Rebow to paint his country home, Wivenhoe Park, Essex. The Major-General also commissioned a smaller painting of the fishing lodge in the grounds of Alresford Hall, which is now in the National Gallery of Victoria. Constable used the money from these commissions towards his wedding with Maria Bicknell. This period of Constable's painting is heavily populated with idyllic country scenes with heavy detail, notably his 1816 work The Wheat Field.

Marriage
From 1809, his childhood friendship with Maria Elizabeth Bicknell developed into a deep, mutual love. Their marriage in 1816 when Constable was 40 was opposed by Maria's grandfather, Dr. Rhudde, rector of East Bergholt. He considered the Constables his social inferiors and threatened Maria with disinheritance. Maria's father, Charles Bicknell, solicitor to George IV and the Admiralty, was reluctant to see Maria throw away her inheritance. Maria pointed out to John that a penniless marriage would detract from any chances he had of making a career in painting. Golding and Ann Constable, while approving the match, held out no prospect of supporting the marriage until Constable was financially secure. After they died in quick succession, Constable inherited a fifth share in the family business. John and Maria's marriage in October 1816 at St Martin-in-the-Fields (with Fisher officiating) was followed by time at Fisher's vicarage and a honeymoon tour of the south coast. The sea at Weymouth and Brighton stimulated Constable to develop new techniques of brilliant colour and vivacious brushwork. At the same time, a greater emotional range began to be expressed in his art. While on honeymoon, Constable began to experiment with works exploring nature's grandeur, characterized by dominating skies, such as Osmington Bay.

Three weeks before their marriage, Constable revealed that he had started work on his most ambitious project to date In a letter to Maria Bicknell from East Bergholt, he wrote:

"’I am now in the midst of a large picture here which I had contemplated for the next exhibition"

The picture was Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River). It was the largest canvas of a working scene on the River Stour that he had worked on to date and the largest he would ever complete largely outdoors. Constable was determined to paint on a larger scale, his objective not only to attract more attention at the Royal Academy exhibitions but also, it seems, to project his ideas about landscape on a scale more in keeping with the achievements of the classical landscape painters he so admired. Although Flatford Mill failed to find a buyer when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1817, its fine and intricate execution drew much praise, encouraging Constable to move on to the even larger canvases that were to follow.

The ‘Six-Footers’
Although he managed to scrape an income from painting, it was not until 1819 that Constable sold his first important canvas, The White Horse, described by Charles Robert Leslie as ‘on many accounts the most important picture Constable ever painted'. The painting (without the frame) sold for the substantial price of 100 guineas to his friend John Fisher, finally providing Constable with a level of financial freedom he had never before known. The White Horse marked an important turning point in Constable’s career; its success saw him elected an associate of the Royal Academy and it led to a series of six monumental landscapes depicting narratives on the River Stour known as the ‘six-footers’ (named for their scale). The extraordinary size of the works helped Constable attract attention in the competitive space of the Academy's exhibitions. Viewed as ‘the knottiest and most forceful landscapes produced in 19th-century Europe’, for many they are the defining works of the artist's career. The series also includes Stratford Mill, 1820 (National Gallery, London); The Hay Wain, 1821 (National Gallery, London); View on the Stour near Dedham, 1822 (Huntington Library and Art Gallery, Los Angeles County); The Lock, 1824 (Private Collection); and The Leaping Horse, 1825 (Royal Academy of Arts, London).

The following year, his second six-footer Stratford Mill was exhibited. The Examiner described it as having ‘a more exact look of nature than any picture we have ever seen by an Englishman’. The painting was a success, acquiring a buyer in the loyal John Fisher, who purchased it for 100 guineas, a price he himself thought too low. Fisher bought the painting for his solicitor and friend, John Pern Tinney. Tinney loved the painting so much, he offered Constable another 100 guineas to paint a companion picture, an offer the artist didn’t take up. Constable's growing popularity in turn led to more lucrative commissions, such as Malvern Hall (1821, Clark Art Institute).

In 1821, his most famous painting The Hay Wain was shown at the Royal Academy's exhibition. Although it failed to find a buyer, it was viewed by some important people of the time, including two Frenchmen, the artist Théodore Géricault and writer Charles Nodier. According to the painter Eugène Delacroix, Géricault returned to France ’quite stunned‘ by Constable’s painting, while Nodier suggested French artists should also look to nature rather than relying on trips to Rome for inspiration. It was eventually purchased, along with View on the Stour near Dedham, by the Anglo-French dealer John Arrowsmith, in 1824. A small painting of Yarmouth Jetty was added to the bargain by Constable, with the sale totalling £250. Both paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon that year, where they caused a sensation, with the Hay Wain being awarded a gold medal by Charles X. The Hay Wain was later acquired by the collector Henry Vaughan who donated it to the National Gallery in 1886.

Of Constable's colour, Delacroix wrote in his journal: "What he says here about the green of his meadows can be applied to every tone". Delacroix repainted the background of his 1824 Massacre de Scio after seeing the Constables at Arrowsmith's Gallery, which he said had done him a great deal of good.

A number of distractions meant that The Lock wasn't finished in time for the 1823 exhibition, leaving the much smaller Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds as the artist's main entry. This may have occurred after Fisher forwarded Constable the money for the painting. This both helped him out of a financial difficulty and nudged him along to get the painting done. The Lock was therefore exhibited the following year to more fanfare and sold for 150 guineas on the first day of the exhibition, the only Constable ever to do so. The Lock is the only upright landscape of the Stour series and the only six-footer that Constable painted more than one version of. A second version now known as the ‘Foster version’ was painted in 1825 and kept by the artist to send to exhibitions. A third, landscape version, known as ‘A Boat Passing a Lock’ (1826) is now in the collection of the Royal Academy of Arts. Constable’s final attempt, The Leaping Horse, was the only six-footer from the Stour series that didn’t sell in Constable’s lifetime.

Later life
Constable’s pleasure at his own success was dampened after his wife started displaying symptoms of tuberculosis. Her growing illness meant that Constable took lodgings for his family in Brighton from 1824 until 1828, in the hope the sea air could restore her health. During this period Constable split his time between Charlotte Street in London and Brighton. This change saw Constable move away from large scale Stour scenes in favour of coastal scenes. He continued painting six-foot canvases, although he was initially unsure of the suitability of Brighton as a subject for painting. In a letter to Fisher in 1824 he wrote

"The magnificence of the sea, and its (to use your own beautiful expression) everlasting voice, is drowned in the din & lost in the tumult of stage coaches - gigs - “flys” &c. -and the beach is only Piccadilly (that part of it where we dined) by the sea-side."

In his lifetime, Constable sold only 20 paintings in England, but in France he sold more than 20 in just a few years. Despite this, he refused all invitations to travel internationally to promote his work, writing to Francis Darby: "I would rather be a poor man [in England] than a rich man abroad." In 1825, perhaps due partly to the worry of his wife's ill-health, the uncongeniality of living in Brighton ("Piccadilly by the seaside" ), and the pressure of numerous outstanding commissions, he quarreled with Arrowsmith and lost his French outlet.

Chain Pier, Brighton was his only ambitious six-foot painting of a Brighton subject, it was exhibited in 1827. The Constables persevered in Brighton for five years to aid Maria’s health, but to no avail. After the birth of their seventh child in January 1828, they returned to Hampstead where Maria died on 23 November at the age of 41. Intensely saddened, Constable wrote to his brother Golding, "hourly do I feel the loss of my departed Angel—God only knows how my children will be brought up...the face of the World is totally changed to me".

Thereafter, he dressed in black and was, according to Leslie, "a prey to melancholy and anxious thoughts". He cared for his seven children alone for the rest of his life. The children were John Charles, Maria Louisa, Charles Golding, Isobel, Emma, Alfred, and Lionel. Only Charles Golding Constable produced offspring. Several of Constable's children also painted, notably his son Lionel. While Lionel eventually gave up painting for photography, several of his works are within the collection of the Clark Art Institute.

Shortly before Maria died, her father had also died, leaving her £20,000. Constable speculated disastrously with the money, paying for the engraving of several mezzotints of some of his landscapes in preparation for a publication. He was hesitant and indecisive, nearly fell out with his engraver, and when the folios were published, could not interest enough subscribers. Constable collaborated closely with mezzotinter David Lucas on 40 prints after his landscapes, one of which went through 13 proof stages, corrected by Constable in pencil and paint. Constable said, "Lucas showed me to the public without my faults", but the venture was not a financial success.

This period saw his art move from the serenity of its earlier phase, to a more broken and accented style. The turmoil and distress of his mind is clearly seen in his later six-foot masterpieces Hadleigh Castle (1829) and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831), which are amongst his most expressive pieces.

He was elected to the Royal Academy in February 1829, at the age of 52. In 1831 he was appointed Visitor at the Royal Academy, where he seems to have been popular with the students.

He began to deliver public lectures on the history of landscape painting, which were attended by distinguished audiences. In a series of lectures at the Royal Institution, Constable proposed a three-fold thesis: firstly, landscape painting is scientific as well as poetic; secondly, the imagination cannot alone produce art to bear comparison with reality; and thirdly, no great painter was ever self-taught.

He also spoke against the new Gothic Revival movement, which he considered mere "imitation".

In 1835, his last lecture to students of the Royal Academy, in which he praised Raphael and called the Academy the "cradle of British art", was "cheered most heartily". He died on the night of 31 March 1837, apparently from heart failure, and was buried with Maria in the graveyard of St John-at-Hampstead Church in Hampstead in London. (His children John Charles Constable and Charles Golding Constable are also buried in this family tomb.)

Locations
Bridge Cottage is a National Trust property, open to the public. Nearby Flatford Mill and Willy Lott's Cottage (the house visible in The Hay Wain) are used by the Field Studies Council for courses. The largest collection of original Constable paintings outside London is on display at Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich. Somerville College, Oxford is in possession of a portrait by Constable.

Art
Constable quietly rebelled against the artistic culture that taught artists to use their imagination to compose their pictures rather than nature itself. He told Leslie, "When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture".

Constable attributed his gift 'to all that lay on the Stour river', however, biographer Anthony Bailey attributed his artistic development to the influence of his well to do relative, Thomas Allen and the London contacts he introduced Constable to.

Although Constable produced paintings throughout his life for the "finished" picture market of patrons and R.A. exhibitions, constant refreshment in the form of on-the-spot studies was essential to his working method. He was never satisfied with following a formula. "The world is wide", he wrote, "no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of all the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from each other."

Constable painted many full-scale preliminary sketches of his landscapes to test the composition in advance of finished pictures. These large sketches, with their free and vigorous brushwork, were revolutionary at the time, and they continue to interest artists, scholars and the general public. The oil sketches of The Leaping Horse and The Hay Wain, for example, convey a vigour and expressiveness missing from Constable's finished paintings of the same subjects. Possibly more than any other aspect of Constable's work, the oil sketches reveal him in retrospect to have been an avant-garde painter, one who demonstrated that landscape painting could be taken in a totally new direction. Constable's watercolours were also remarkably free for their time: the almost mystical Stonehenge, 1835, with its double rainbow, is often considered to be one of the greatest watercolours ever painted. When he exhibited it in 1836, Constable appended a text to the title: "The mysterious monument of Stonehenge, standing remote on a bare and boundless heath, as much unconnected with the events of past ages as it is with the uses of the present, carries you back beyond all historical records into the obscurity of a totally unknown period."

In addition to the full-scale oil sketches, Constable completed numerous observational studies of landscapes and clouds, determined to become more scientific in his recording of atmospheric conditions. The power of his physical effects was sometimes apparent even in the full-scale paintings which he exhibited in London; The Chain Pier, 1827, for example, prompted a critic to write: "the atmosphere possesses a characteristic humidity about it, that almost imparts the wish for an umbrella".

The sketches themselves were the first ever done in oils directly from the subject in the open air, with the notable exception of the oil sketches Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes made in Rome around 1780. To convey the effects of light and movement, Constable used broken brushstrokes, often in small touches, which he scumbled over lighter passages, creating an impression of sparkling light enveloping the entire landscape. One of the most expressionistic and powerful of all his studies is Seascape Study with Rain Cloud, painted about 1824 at Brighton, which captures with slashing dark brushstrokes the immediacy of an exploding cumulus shower at sea. Constable also became interested in painting rainbow effects, for example in Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, 1831, and in Cottage at East Bergholt, 1833.

To the sky studies he added notes, often on the back of the sketches, of the prevailing weather conditions, direction of light, and time of day, believing that the sky was "the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment" in a landscape painting. In this habit he is known to have been influenced by the pioneering work of the meteorologist Luke Howard on the classification of clouds; Constable's annotations of his own copy of Researches About Atmospheric Phaenomena by Thomas Forster show him to have been fully abreast of meteorological terminology. "I have done a good deal of skying", Constable wrote to Fisher on 23 October 1821; "I am determined to conquer all difficulties, and that most arduous one among the rest".

Constable once wrote in a letter to Leslie, "My limited and abstracted art is to be found under every hedge, and in every lane, and therefore nobody thinks it worth picking up". He could never have imagined how influential his honest techniques would turn out to be. Constable's art inspired not only contemporaries like Géricault and Delacroix, but the Barbizon School, and the French impressionists of the late nineteenth century.

In 2019 two drawings by Constable were found among the possessions of the late playwright and poet, Christopher Fry; the drawings later sold for £60,000 and £32,000 at auction.

Selected paintings

 * Dedham Vale (1802) – Victoria and Albert Museum, London
 * The Stour (1810) – Philadelphia Museum of Art
 * Landscape: Two Boys Fishing (1813) – Anglesey Abbey, Cambs, NT
 * Landscape: Ploughing Scene in Suffolk (1814, revised c. 1816 and 1831) – Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
 *  The Mill Stream, Flatford (1814) – Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
 * The Stour Valley And Dedham Village (1814–1815) – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
 * Boat-building near Flatford Mill (1815) – Victoria and Albert Museum, London
 * Golding Constable's Flower Garden (1815) – Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
 * Golding Constable's Kitchen Garden (1815) – Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
 * Portrait of Maria Bicknell, Mrs. John Constable (1816) – Tate Britain, London
 * Wivenhoe Park, Essex (1816) – National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
 * The Quarters behind Alresford Hall (1816) – National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
 * Flatford Mill (original title Scene on a Navigable River) (1816) – Tate Britain, London
 * Two Donkeys (1816) – Philadelphia Museum of Art
 * Weymouth Bay: Bowleaze Cove and Jordon Hill (1816–17) – National Gallery, London
 * A Cottage in a Cornfield (1817) – National Museum Cardiff
 * Weymouth Bay with Approaching Storm (1819) – Louvre, Paris
 * The White Horse (A Scene on the River Stour) (1819) – Frick Collection, New York City
 * Harwich- The Low Lighthouse and Beacon Hill (1820) – Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
 * Hampstead Heath (1820) – Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
 * Dedham Lock and Mill (1820) – Victoria and Albert Museum, London
 * Stratford Mill (1820) – National Gallery, London
 * The Hay Wain (original title Landscape: Noon; 1821) – National Gallery, London
 * The Grove, or the Admiral's House in Hampstead (1821–22) – Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
 * View on the Stour near Dedham (1822) – The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
 * Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds (1823) – Victoria and Albert Museum, London
 * The Lock (1824) – Private Collection
 * Seascape Study with Rain Clouds (1824–25) – Royal Academy of Arts, London
 * Brighton Beach (c. 1824–26) – Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin
 * The Leaping Horse (1825) – Royal Academy of Arts, London
 * Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds (1825) – Frick Collection, New York City
 * The Cornfield (1826) – National Gallery, London
 * Chain Pier, Brighton (1827) – Tate Britain, London
 * The Vale of Dedham (1828) – National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
 * Hadleigh Castle (1829) – Yale Center for British Art and sketch Tate Britain
 * Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831) – Tate Britain, London
 * Sir Richard Steele's Cottage, Hampstead (1832) – Yale Center for British Art
 * The Opening of Waterloo Bridge seen from Whitehall Stairs, 18 June 1817 (c.1832) – Tate Britain, London
 * The Valley Farm (1835) – Tate Britain, London
 * Stonehenge (1835) – Victoria and Albert Museum, London
 * Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow (1836) – Tate Britain, London
 * Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1836) – National Gallery, London
 * Arundel Mill and Castle (c. 1836–37) – Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: John Constable


text:
Castle Howard

Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, within the civil parish of Henderskelfe, located 15 mi north of York. It is a private residence and has been the home of the Carlisle branch of the Howard family for more than 300 years. Castle Howard is not a fortified structure, but the term "castle" is sometimes used in the name of an English country house that was built on the site of a former castle.

The house is familiar to television and film audiences as the fictional "Brideshead", both in Granada Television's 1981 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and in a two-hour 2008 adaptation for cinema.

History
In 1577, the 4th Duke of Norfolk's third son, Lord William Howard, married his step-sister Elizabeth Dacre, youngest daughter of the 4th Baron Dacre. She brought with her the sizable estates of Henderskelfe in Yorkshire and Naworth Castle in Cumberland. Castle Howard was commissioned by the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, who was a male-line descendant of Lord William Howard. The site selected was part of the Henderskelfe estate. The creation of Castle Howard, began in 1699, with the start of design work by John Vanbrugh. It was completed with the decoration of the Long Gallery in 1811.

The house is surrounded by a large estate which, at the time of the 7th Earl of Carlisle, covered over 13000 acres and included the villages of Welburn, Bulmer, Slingsby, Terrington and Coneysthorpe. The estate was served by its own railway station, Castle Howard station, from 1845 to the 1950s. While attending Girton College during the early Edwardian era, Lady Dorothy Georgiana Howard, the daughter of the 9th Earl and "Radical Countess" of Carlisle, befriended six of her fellow students, including the future archaeologist Gisela Richter and future candidate for Roman Catholic Sainthood Anna Abrikosova. All six were invited by Lady Dorothy to Castle Howard as guests during holidays. After the death of the 9th Earl in 1911, Castle Howard was inherited by his fifth son, Geoffrey Howard, with later earls having Naworth Castle as their northern country house. Henry 'Chips' Channon, the diarist and future Conservative MP, visited Castle Howard in August 1923 and recounted in his diary that 'The house is uncomfortable in the extreme and is badly kept up. Everywhere there are signs of decaying magnificence.' Channon added that 'The galleries are reminiscent of the Vatican with their hundreds of busts and statues of emperors and gods. The great library is an enormous narrow red room the length of the house and is hung with enough paintings to found a museum.'

In 1952, Castle Howard was opened to the public by its then-owner, Lord Howard of Henderskelfe, a younger son of Geoffrey Howard. It is now owned by a Howard family company, Castle Howard Estate Limited, and managed by the Hon. Nicholas Howard (the second son of Lord Howard of Henderskelfe) and his wife, Victoria.

House

The 3rd Earl of Carlisle first spoke to William Talman, a leading architect, but commissioned Vanbrugh, a fellow member of the Kit-Cat Club, to design the building. Castle Howard was that gentleman-dilettante's first foray into architecture, but he was assisted by Nicholas Hawksmoor. Vanbrugh's design evolved into a Baroque structure with two symmetrical wings projecting to either side of a north–south axis. The crowning central dome was added to the design at a late stage, after building had begun. Construction began at the east end, with the East Wing constructed from 1701 to 1703, the east end of the Garden Front from 1701 to 1706, the Central Block (including dome) from 1703 to 1706, and the west end of the Garden Front from 1707 to 1709. All are exuberantly decorated in Baroque style, with coronets, cherubs, urns and cyphers, with Roman Doric pilasters on the north front and Corinthian on the south. Many interiors were decorated by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini.

The Earl then turned his energies to the surrounding garden and grounds. Although the complete design is shown in the third volume of Colen Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus, published in 1725, the West Wing was not yet started when Vanbrugh died in 1726, despite his remonstration with the Earl. The house remained incomplete on the death of the 3rd Earl in 1738, but the remaining construction finally started at the direction of the 4th Earl. Vanbrugh's design was not completed: the West Wing was built in a contrasting Palladian style to a design by the 3rd Earl's son-in-law, Sir Thomas Robinson. The new wing remained incomplete, with no first floor or roof, at the death of the 4th Earl in 1758. Although a roof had been added, the interior remained undecorated by the death of Robinson in 1777. Rooms were completed stage by stage over the following decades, but the whole was not completed until 1811 under Charles Heathcote Tatham.

A large part of the house was destroyed by a fire which broke out on 9 November 1940. The dome, the central hall, the dining room and the state rooms on the east side were entirely destroyed. Antonio Pellegrini's ceiling decoration, the Fall of Phaeton, was lost when the dome collapsed. In total, twenty pictures (including two Tintorettos) and several valuable mirrors were lost. The fire took the Malton and York Fire Brigades eight hours to bring under control. Some of the devastated rooms have been restored over the following decades. In 1960–61 the dome was rebuilt, and in the following couple of years Pellegrini's Fall of Phaeton was recreated on the underside of the dome. The East Wing remains a shell, although it has been re-roofed. In 2009 an underwater ground-source heat recovery system was installed under the castle's lake that halved the heating bill. According to figures released by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, over 269,000 people visited Castle Howard in 2019.

Gardens
Castle Howard has extensive and diverse gardens. There is a large formal garden immediately behind (i.e., on the south side of) the house. The house is prominently situated on a ridge and this was exploited in the development of an English landscape park, which adjoins and opens out from the formal garden. The gardens are Grade I listed on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

Two major garden buildings are set in this landscape: the Temple of the Four Winds at the end of the garden, and the Mausoleum in the park. There is a lake on either side of the house. There is a woodland garden, Ray Wood (formerly Wray Wood), immediately east of the house, and a walled garden which contains decorative rose and flower gardens. The Ray Wood walls date from the 18th century and were restored in 2007.

Further buildings outside the preserved gardens include Nicholas Hawksmoor's Pyramid, restored in 2015, an obelisk, and several follies and eyecatchers in the form of fortifications which have been restored in recent years; these include Carrmire Gate and Pyramid Gate. In nearby Pretty Wood, there are two more monuments, The Four Faces and a smaller pyramid by Hawksmoor.

Located on the estate, but operating separately from the house and gardens and run by an entirely independent charitable trust, is the 127 acre Yorkshire Arboretum.

Listed status
The house is Grade I listed and there are many other listed structures on the estate, several of which are on the Heritage at Risk Register.

In media
Castle Howard's most famous appearance in film was as Brideshead Castle in both the 1981 TV series and the 2008 film adaptations of Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited. It has been used as a location in many other TV and film productions including: the 1965 film Lady L; the 1966 film The Spy with a Cold Nose; Stanley Kubrick's 1975 film Barry Lyndon; the 1995 mini-series The Buccaneers; the 2006 film Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties; the 2013 TV series Death Comes to Pemberley; the 2015 Bollywood film Shaandar; in the 2016 ITV series Victoria; and the 2020 Netflix series Bridgerton (2020).

title: Castle Howard


text:
Historic Scotland

Historic Scotland (Alba Aosmhor) was an executive agency of the Scottish Office and later the Scottish Government from 1991 to 2015, responsible for safeguarding Scotland's built heritage and promoting its understanding and enjoyment. Under the terms of a Bill of the Scottish Parliament published on 3 March 2014, Historic Scotland was dissolved and its functions were transferred to Historic Environment Scotland (HES) on 1 October 2015. HES also took over the functions of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

Role
Historic Scotland was a successor organisation to the Ancient Monuments Division of the Ministry of Works and the Scottish Development Department. It was created as an agency in 1991 and was attached to the Scottish Executive Education Department, which embraces all aspects of the cultural heritage, in May 1999. As part of the Scottish Government, Historic Scotland was directly accountable to the Scottish Ministers.

In 2002, proposals to restore Castle Tioram in the West Highlands by putting a roof back on were blocked by Historic Scotland, which favoured stabilising it as a ruin. This position was supported in an extensive local Public Inquiry at which the arguments for both sides were heard. It has been implied that this dispute has led to a review of the operations of the organisation.

After widespread consultation, Historic Scotland published a comprehensive series of Scottish Historic Environment Policy papers, consolidated into a single volume, in October 2008.

The agency's Framework Document sets out the responsibilities of the Scottish Ministers and the agency's Chief Executive. Its Corporate Plan sets out its targets and performance against them.

Historic Scotland and the Glasgow School of Art's Digital Design Studio formed the Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualization to promote the documentation and 3D representation of heritage objects, architecture, and environments with laser scanning and 3D visualization software.

Properties
Historic Scotland had direct responsibility for maintaining and running over 360 monuments in its care, about a quarter of which are staffed and charge admission. These properties have additional features such as guidebooks, books, and other resources. Historic Scotland sought to increase the number of events run at its sites, most frequently designed to engage young people with history. Similarly, new museums and visitor centres were opened, notably at Arbroath Abbey and Urquhart Castle. There was also a hospitality section, which makes some properties available for wedding receptions and other functions.

Membership
Membership in Historic Scotland was promoted by the organisation, with benefits such as free entry to all their properties and over 400 events for the duration of the annual membership, as well as half-price entry to properties in England (under the care of English Heritage), Wales (under the care of Cadw), and the Isle of Man (under the care of Manx National Heritage), becoming free in subsequent years. Lifetime memberships were also available, and all members received the quarterly magazine 'Historic Scotland'.

title: Historic Scotland


text:
Robert Adam

Robert Adam (3 July 1728 –3 March 1792) was a British neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam (1689–1748), Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him. With his older brother John, Robert took on the family business, which included lucrative work for the Board of Ordnance, after William's death.

In 1754, he left for Rome, spending nearly five years on the continent studying architecture under Charles-Louis Clérisseau and Giovanni Battista Piranesi. On his return to Britain he established a practice in London, where he was joined by his younger brother James. Here he developed the "Adam Style", and his theory of "movement" in architecture, based on his studies of antiquity and became one of the most successful and fashionable architects in the country. Adam held the post of Architect of the King's Works from 1761 to 1769.

Robert Adam was a leader of the first phase of the classical revival in England and Scotland from around 1760 until his death. He influenced the development of Western architecture, both in Europe and in North America. Adam designed interiors and fittings as well as houses. Much of his work consisted of remodelling existing houses, as well as contributions to Edinburgh's townscape and designing romantic pseudo-mediaeval country houses in Scotland.

He served as the member of Parliament for Kinross-shire from 1768 to 1774.

Early life
Adam was born on 3 July 1728 at Gladney House in Kirkcaldy, Fife, the second son of Mary Robertson (1699–1761), the daughter of William Robertson of Gladney, and architect William Adam. As a child he was noted as having a "feeble constitution". From 1734 at the age of six Adam attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh where he learned Latin (from the second year lessons were conducted in Latin) until he was 15, he was taught to read works by Virgil, Horace, Sallust and parts of Cicero and in his final year Livy.

In autumn 1743, he matriculated at the University of Edinburgh, and compulsory classes for all students were: the Greek language, logic, metaphysics and natural philosophy. Students could choose three elective subjects, Adam attended classes in mathematics, taught by Colin Maclaurin, and anatomy, taught by Alexander Monro primus. His studies were interrupted by the arrival of Bonnie Prince Charlie and his Highlanders, who occupied Edinburgh during the Jacobite rising of 1745. At the end of the year, Robert fell seriously ill for some months, and it seems unlikely that he returned to university, having completed only two years of study.

On his recovery from illness in 1746, he joined his elder brother John as apprentice to his father. He assisted William Adam on projects such as the building of Inveraray Castle and the continuing extensions of Hopetoun House. William's position as Master Mason to the Board of Ordnance also began to generate much work, as the Highlands were fortified following the failed Jacobite revolt. Robert's early ambition was to be an artist rather than architect, and the style of his early sketches in the manner of Salvator Rosa are reflected in his earliest surviving architectural drawings, which show picturesque gothic follies. William Adam died in June 1748, and left Dowhill, a part of the Blair Adam estate which included Dowhill Castle, to Robert. From his father, Robert inherited an extensive library and extended it.

Architectural practice in Edinburgh

On William Adam's death, John Adam inherited both the family business and the position of Master Mason to the Board of Ordnance. He immediately took Robert into partnership, later to be joined by James Adam. The Adam Brothers' first major commission was the decoration of the grand state apartments on the first floor at Hopetoun House, followed by their first "new build" at Dumfries House. For the Board of Ordnance, the brothers were the main contractor at Fort George, a large modern fort near Inverness designed by military engineer Colonel William Skinner. Visits to this project, begun in 1750, would occupy the brothers every summer for the next 10 years, and, along with works at many other barracks and forts, provided Robert with a solid foundation in practical building.

In the winter of 1749–1750, Adam travelled to London with his friend, the poet John Home. He took the opportunity for architectural study, visiting Wilton, designed by Inigo Jones, and the Queens Hermitage in Richmond by Roger Morris. His sketchbook of the trip also shows a continuing interest in Gothic architecture.

Among his friends at Edinburgh were the philosophers Adam Ferguson and David Hume and the artist Paul Sandby whom he met in the Highlands. Other Edinburgh acquaintances included Gilbert Elliot, William Wilkie, John Home and Alexander Wedderburn.

Grand Tour
On 3 October 1754, Robert Adam in the company of his brother James (who went as far as Brussels) set off from Edinburgh for his Grand Tour, stopping for a few days in London, where they visited the Mansion House, London, St Stephen Walbrook, St Paul's Cathedral, Windsor, Berkshire, in the company of Thomas Sandby who showed them his landscaping at Windsor Great Park and Virginia Water Lake. They sailed from Dover arriving in Calais on 28 October 1754. He joined Charles Hope-Weir, brother of the Earl of Hopetoun in Brussels and together they travelled to Rome. Hope agreed to take Adam on the tour at the suggestion of his uncle, the Marquess of Annandale, who had undertaken the Grand Tour himself. While in Brussels the pair attended a Play and Masquerade, as well as visiting churches and palaces in the city. Travelling on to Tournai, then Lille, where they visited the citadel designed by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban. By 12 November 1754 Adam and Hope were in Paris where they took lodgings in Hotel de Notre Dame.

Adam and Hope travelled on to Italy together, before falling out in Rome over travelling expenses and accommodation. Robert Adam stayed on in Rome until 1757, studying classical architecture and honing his drawing skills. His tutors included the French architect and artist Charles-Louis Clérisseau, and the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Here, he became acquainted with the work of the pioneering classical archaeologist and art historian, theorist Johann Joachim Winckelmann. On his return journey, Adam and Clerisseau spent time intensively studying the ruins of Diocletian's Palace at Spalatro in Dalmatia (now known as Split, in modern Croatia). These studies were later published as Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia in 1764.

Architectural practice in London
He returned to Britain in 1758 and set up in business in London with his brother James Adam. They focused on designing complete schemes for the decoration and furnishing of houses. Palladian design was popular, and Robert designed a number of country houses in this style, but he evolved a new, more flexible style incorporating elements of classical Roman design alongside influences from Greek, Byzantine and Baroque styles. The Adam brothers' success can also be attributed to a desire to design everything down to the smallest detail, ensuring a sense of unity in their design. In Adam interiors, all the furnishings were custom designed to accord with the decoration of the room in a unified harmony. Often the carpets were woven to match the intricate patterns of the ceiling above, while every fitting including sconces, mirrors, and doorknobs also received a custom design emulating the motifs of the room.

The Adam practice was not without mishap, however. In 1768 the brothers purchased a 99-year lease for a marshy plot of land beside the Thames in Westminster, where they built a 24-house terrace development known as the Adelphi. The project was very ambitious and is the first instance where terraced houses were designed individually to give unified harmony to the whole development (previously terraced houses were built to one replicated design, side-by-side around a square). However, the project became a white elephant for Robert and his brothers, with uncertain financing and costs spiralling out of control. The houses were built on a huge artificial terrace resting on vaulted substructures on the level of the Thames, which Robert Adam was certain could be leased to the British government as warehouses. However, this intention failed to materialize; the Adam brothers were left with huge debts and, in 1772, had to lay off 3,000 workmen and cease building. Robert Adam himself moved into one of the houses in the Adelphi, along with supportive friends like David Garrick and Josiah Wedgewood, who opened a showroom for his ceramics in one of the houses. In 1774, a public lottery was held to raise funds for the brothers, which allowed them to avert bankruptcy.

Public life

Adam was elected a fellow of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in 1758 and of the Society of Antiquaries in 1761, the same year he was appointed Architect of the King's Works (jointly with Sir William Chambers). His younger brother James succeeded him in this post when he relinquished the role in 1768 to devote more time to his elected office as member of Parliament for Kinross-shire.

Architectural style
Adam rejected the Palladian style, as introduced to England by Inigo Jones, and advocated by Lord Burlington, as "ponderous" and "disgustful". However, he continued their tradition of drawing inspiration directly from classical antiquity, during his four-year stay in Europe. Adam developed a new style of architectural decoration, one which was more archaeologically accurate than past neoclassical styles, but nonetheless innovative and not bound only by ancient precedents. In Works in Architecture, co-authored by Robert and James, the brothers stated that Graeco-Roman examples should "serve as models which we should imitate, and as standards by which we ought to judge." The discoveries being made in Herculaneum and Pompeii at the time provided ample material for Robert Adam to draw on for inspiration.

The Adam brothers' principle of "movement" was largely Robert's conception, although the theory was first written down by James. "Movement" relied on dramatic contrasts and diversity of form, and drew on the picturesque aesthetic. The first volume of the Adam brothers' Works (1773) cited Kedleston Hall, designed by Robert in 1761, as an outstanding example of movement in architecture.

By contrasting room sizes and decorative schemes, Adam applied the concept of movement to his interiors also. His style of decoration, described by Pevsner as "Classical Rococo", drew on Roman "grotesque" stucco decoration.

Influence
Adam's work had influenced the direction of architecture and design across the western world. In England his collaboration with Thomas Chippendale resulted in some of the finest neoclassicist designs of the time, most notably in the Harewood House collection of Chippendale's work. In North America, the Federal style owes much to neoclassicism as practised by Adam. In Europe, Adam notably influenced Charles Cameron, the Scotsman who designed apartments in the Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo and other Russian palaces for Catherine the Great. However, by the time of his death, Adam's neoclassicism was being superseded in Britain by a more severe, Greek phase of the classical revival, as practised by James "Athenian" Stuart. The Adam brothers employed several draughtsmen who would go on to establish themselves as architects, including George Richardson, and the Italian Joseph Bonomi, who Robert originally hired in Rome.

Written works
During their lifetime Robert and James Adam published two volumes of their designs, Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam (in 1773–1778 and 1779; a third volume was published posthumously, in 1822).

Death and burial
Adam had long suffered from stomach and bowel problems, probably caused by a peptic ulcer and irritable bowel syndrome. While at home – 11 Albemarle Street, London – on 1 March 1792, one of the ulcers burst, and on 3 March Adam died.

The funeral was held on 10 March; he was buried in the south aisle of Westminster Abbey. The pall-bearers were several of his clients: Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch; George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry; James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale; David Murray, 2nd Earl of Mansfield; Lord Frederick Campbell and Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet.

Knowing he was dying, he drafted his will on 2 March 1792. Having never married, Adam left his estate to his sisters Elizabeth Adam and Margaret Adam.

His obituary appeared in the March 1792 edition of The Gentleman's Magazine:

It is somewhat remarkable that the Arts should be deprived at the same time of two of their greatest ornaments, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr Adam: and it is difficult to say which of them excelled most in his particular profession... Mr Adam produced a total change in the architecture of this country: and his fertile genius in elegant ornament was not confined to the decoration of buildings, but has been diffused to every branch of manufacture. His talents extend beyond the lie of his own profession: he displayed in his numerous drawings in landscape a luxuriance of composition, and an effect of light and shadow, which have scarcely been equalled...to the last period of his life, Mr Adam displayed an increasing vigour of genius and refinement of taste: for in the space of one year preceding his death, he designed eight great public works, besides twenty five private buildings, so various in their style, and so beautiful in their composition, that they have been allowed by the best judges, sufficient of themselves, to establish his fame unrivalled as an artist.

He left nearly 9,000 drawings, 8,856 of which (by both Robert and James Adam) were subsequently purchased in 1833 for £200 by the architect John Soane and are now at the Soane Museum in London.

List of architectural works
Works include:

Public buildings

 * Fort George, Scotland, the buildings within the fort were designed by William Adam, after his death his sons oversaw completion (1748–69)
 * The Argyll Arms, Inveraray (1750–56)
 * The Town House, Inveraray (1750–57)
 * Royal Exchange, Edinburgh, with his brother John Adam (1753–54)
 * Screen in front of the Old Admiralty, Whitehall, London (1760)
 * Kedleston Hotel, Quarndon (1760)
 * Little Market Hall, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire (1761) later altered
 * Riding School, Edinburgh (1763) demolished
 * Courts of Justice and Corn Market, Hertford, Hertfordshire, now Shire Hall (1768). Altered, but partially restored to original design. A joint project with James Adam.
 * Pulteney Bridge, Bath (1770)
 * County House, Kinross (1771)
 * Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (1772)
 * Register House, Edinburgh (1774–1789)
 * Market Cross, Bury St Edmunds, refaced and upper floor added (a theatre now art gallery) (1776)
 * Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, remodelled, (1775) demolished
 * Red Lion Inn, Pontefract (1776)
 * Drummonds Bank, Charing Cross, London (1777–78) demolished
 * Home House, London (1777)
 * Old College, University of Edinburgh, (1788-onwards) completed to an amended design by William Henry Playfair 1831
 * The Bridewell, Edinburgh, (1791) demolished
 * The Assembly Rooms, Glasgow (1791–94) demolished
 * Trades Hall, Glasgow, Scotland (1791–1792) (completed 1792–1802 by his brothers)
 * Glasgow Royal Infirmary (1791–94) rebuilt 1914
 * Coutts Bank enclosed bridge, John Adam Street (1799) later demolished

Churches

 * Yester Chapel, Lothian, new west front in Gothic style (1753)
 * Cumnock church, Ayrshire (1753–54) demolished
 * St. Mary Magdalene, Croome Park, interior (1761–63) the church was designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown
 * St. Andrew's Church, Gunton Hall, Gunton, Norfolk (1769)
 * St Mary's, Mistley (1776) only the towers survive
 * St. George's Chapel, Edinburgh, (1792) demolished

Mausoleums

 * William Adam Mausoleum, Greyfriars Kirkyard (1753–55)
 * Bowood House Mausoleum (1761–64)
 * David Hume Mausoleum, Old Calton Cemetery (1777–78)
 * Templetown Mausoleum, Castle Upton, County Antrim Ireland (1789) for 2nd Lord Templetown.
 * Johnstone Family Mausoleum, Ochil Road graveyard, Alva, Clackmannanshire (1789–90)
 * Johnstone Family Mausoleum, Westerkirk graveyard, near Bentpath, Dumfries and Galloway 1790

Urban domestic work

 * Little Wallingford House, Whitehall, London, alterations (1761) demolished
 * Lansdowne House, Berkeley Square, London (1762–67), partially demolished, the Dining Room is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Drawing Room is in Philadelphia Museum of Art
 * 34 Pall Mall, London (1765–66) demolished
 * Langford House, Mary Street, Dublin, Ireland. (1765) First recorded work in Ireland remodelling of house for Rt. Hon. Hercules Langford Rowley. Demolished 1931.
 * 16 Hanover Square, London, alterations (1766–67) demolished
 * Deputy Ranger's lodge, Green Park, London (1768–71) demolished in the 19th century
 * The Adelphi development, London (1768–1775) mostly demolished 1930s, a ceiling & fireplace are in the Victoria and Albert Museum
 * Chandos House, London (1770–71)
 * 8 Queen Street, Edinburgh (1770–71) originally designed for Lord Chief Baron Ord, now housing the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
 * Mansfield Street, London (1770–72)
 * Northumberland House, London, alterations (1770) demolished, parts of the Glass Drawing Room survive in the Victoria and Albert Museum
 * 20 St. James's Square (1771–74)
 * 33 St. James's Square (1771–73)
 * Ashburnham House, Dover Street, London, alterations (1773)
 * Derby House, 26 Grosvenor Square (1773–74) demolished
 * Portland Place, London (1773–94) (only a few houses survive)
 * 11 St. James's Square (1774–76)
 * Frederick's Place, London (1775–78)
 * Roxburghe House, Hanover Square, London (1776–78) demolished
 * Home House, London (1777 – before 1784)
 * 31 (now 17) Hill Street, London alterations (1777–79)
 * Apsley House, London (1778) altered
 * Cumberland House, Pall Mall, London, alterations and interiors (1780–88) demolished
 * Marlborough House, Brighton (1786)
 * Fitzroy Square, London (1790–94) only the south and east sides were built
 * Charlotte Square (north side), Edinburgh (1791–94)
 * 169–185 High Street, Glasgow (1793) demolished
 * 1–3 Robert Street

Country houses with major work

 * Dumfries House, Ayrshire (1754–1759)
 * Hatchlands Park, Surrey, interiors (1756)
 * Douglas Castle, Lanarkshire (1757–1761)
 * Paxton House, near Berwick-upon-Tweed (1758)
 * Shardeloes, Amersham, Buckinghamshire (altered and completed the original design by Stiff Leadbetter) (1759–63)
 * Harewood House, West Yorkshire (1759–1771)
 * Kedleston Hall, near Derby (1759–1765)
 * Mellerstain House, Kelso, Scottish Borders (1760–1768)
 * Ugbrooke, Devon
 * Osterley Park, west London (1761–1780)
 * Mersham le Hatch, Mersham, Ashford, Kent (1762–1766)
 * Syon House interior, Brentford (1762–1769)
 * Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire (1766–1770) later extensively reconstructed 1816 by Robert Smirke and other architects later
 * Nostell Priory (1766–80)
 * Newby Hall, Newby Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire (1767–76)
 * Kenwood House, Hampstead, London (1768)
 * Saltram House, Plymouth, Devon (1768–69)
 * Bowood House, near Calne, Wiltshire, Diocletian wing, and other interiors (1770)
 * Wedderburn Castle, Duns, Scottish Borders, Berwickshire (1770–1778)
 * Culzean Castle, South Ayrshire (1772–1790)
 * Moreton Hall, Suffolk (1773–1776), building and interiors
 * Stowe, Buckinghamshire (1774)
 * Moreton Hall, Bury St Edmund (1783)
 * Brasted Place, Kent (c. 1783)
 * Pitfour Castle, Tayside, attributed (c. 1785–90)
 * Seton Castle, East Lothian (1789)
 * Newliston, Lothian (1789)
 * Dalquharran Castle, South Ayrshire (1789–1792); now a ruin
 * Airthrey Castle, Stirlingshire (1790–1791)
 * Balbardie House, Lothian (1792); demolished
 * Gosford House, near Longniddry, East Lothian (1790–1800)

Garden buildings and follies

 * Stables, Inveraray Castle, joint work with his brother John (1758–60)
 * North Lodge, Kedleston Hall (1759)
 * Circular and Octagon pavilion, La Trappe, Hammersmith (1760) for George Bubb Dodington (demolished)
 * Conservatory Croome Park (1760)
 * Rotunda Croome Park, attributed (1760)
 * Old Rectory, Kedleston Hall (c. 1761)
 * Entrance screen, Moor Park, Hertfordshire (1763)
 * The Conservatory, Osterley Park (1763)
 * Bridge, Audley End House, Essex (c. 1763–64)
 * Tea Pavilion, Moor Park, Hertfordshire (c. 1764)
 * Gatehouse Kimbolton Castle (c. 1764)
 * Bridge, Kedleston Hall (1764)
 * Estate Village Lowther, Cumbria (1766)
 * Dunstall 'Castle' and Garden Alcove, Croome Park (1766)
 * Entrance arch, Croome Court (1767)
 * Entrance Screen, Cullen House, Cullen, Moray (1767)
 * Bridge, Osterley Park (c. 1768)
 * Entrance screen, Syon House (1769)
 * Fishing, Boat & Bath House, Kedleston Hall (1770–71)
 * Circular Temple, Audley End House, Essex (1771)
 * Lion Bridge, Alnwick (1773)
 * Stag Lodge, Saltram House, Devon (c. 1773)
 * The Stables, Featherstone entrance & Huntwick arch Nostell Priory (1776)
 * Wyke Green Lodges, Osterley, Middlesex (1777); remodelled
 * the Home Farm, Culzean Castle, Ayrshire (1777–79)
 * Brizlee Tower, Alnwick, Gothic tower (1777–81)
 * Oswald's Temple, Auchincruive, Ayrshire (1778)
 * 'Ruined' arch and viaduct, Culzean Castle (1780)
 * The semi-circular conservatory, Osterley Park (1780)
 * Tea House Bridge, Audley End House, Essex (1782)
 * The Stables, Culzean Castle (c. 1785)
 * Stables, Castle Upton, Templepatrick, County Antrim, Ireland. (1788–89). Important range of office buildings in castle style.
 * Montagu Bridge, Dalkeith Palace, Lothian (1792)
 * Loftus Hall, Fethard-on-sea, County Wexford, Ireland. Date unknown. Proposed gates.
 * Lion Gate and Lodge, Syon Park, London. Date unknown.

Country houses with minor work

 * Hopetoun House, West Lothian (interiors) (1750–54), the house was designed by William Adam
 * Ballochmyle House, Ayrshire (c. 1757–60)
 * Compton Verney House, added the wings and interiors (1760–63)
 * Croome Park, three interiors: the Library the fittings are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Gallery and Tapestry Room this is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (1760–65)
 * Audley End House, redecoration of ground floor rooms (1763–65)
 * Goldsborough Hall, near Knaresborough, North Yorkshire (1764–1765)
 * Alnwick Castle, Northumberland (interiors) (1766) destroyed when Anthony Salvin created the current state rooms
 * Woolton Hall, Woolton, Merseyside (1772), remodelled main façade and the interior
 * Headfort House, County Meath, Ireland. Internal work, including stairs and notably the Great Eating Room (1775) for Thomas Taylour, 1st. Earl Bective.
 * Wormleybury, Hertfordshire, internal work including entrance hall & staircase (1777)
 * Downhill, near Coleraine, County Londonderry, Ireland. (1780) Design for dining room. Not executed. House is now a crumbling ruin.
 * Moccas Court, Moccas, Herefordshire, internal work including drawing room (1781)
 * Castle Upton, Templepartick, County Antrim, Ireland. Remodelling of house. (1782–83) for 1st. Lord Templetown.
 * Archerfield House, Lothian, internal work including library (1791)
 * Summerhill House, County Meath, Ireland. 1765 unexecuted. Proposed alterations including a quadrant link connecting two wings.

title: Robert Adam


text:
Talk:Northern Ireland Environment Agency

Discussion
"The Environment and Heritage Service is the United Kingdom Government's nature conservation agency for Northern Ireland" - seems slightly contradictory as we then go on to say it does both the natural and built environments? Nevilley

This is the odd one out amongst the four agencies, the other three only deal with the natural environment, but the EHS deals with both. Renata

Yep, I see that, thanks, but what I am saying is that the sentence seems to say it is the "nature" agency ONLY, when I wondered if it should maybe say it is the conservation agency for both natural and built environments? Nev

Hi Nev, is this any better? Renata

YES!!!! Brilliant rewording, puts it all in a nutshell. Nev.

SSSI template
I've set up a new template, SSSI. Using * generates:

Link to example

I'm happy if people want to copy this for other countries; or to add a country/ designating body field and the relevant URLs. Andy Mabbett 11:39, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Need To Update to "Northern Ireland Environment Agency"
This article needs to be updated to take account of the fact that the Service, since July 1 2008, is now the "Northern Ireland Environment Agency". 217.41.240.15 (talk) 09:38, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


text:
Video clip

Video clips refer to mostly short videos, which are usually silly jokes and funny clips, often from movies or entertainment videos such as those on YouTube. Short videos on TikTok and YouTube often influence popular culture and internet trends. Such clips are usually taken out of context and have many gags in them. Sometimes they can be used to attract the public to the user's other accounts or their long-form videos. The term is also used more loosely to mean any video program, including a full program, uploaded onto a website or other medium.

On the Internet
Video clips gained popularity online. there were millions of video clips available online, with new websites springing up focusing entirely on offering free video clips to users. Many established corporate sites added the ability to clip existing video content on their websites.

While most of this content is non-exclusive and available on competing sites, some companies produce their own videos and do not need to rely on the work of outside companies or amateurs. While some video clips are taken from established media sources, community and individually produced clips are more common. Some individuals host their created works on vlogs (video blogs) and the use of Internet video clips as they became bigger grew swiftly. Between March and July 2006, YouTube grew from 30 to 100 million views of videos per day. One of the developments during that period were the BBC's iPlayer, which was released for open beta testing in July 2007.

Advertising
Video clips are a common form of advertising. With online entertainment sites delivering high-quality television programming content, free of charge, online video entertainment rose substantially in popularity.

Today, as businesses seek to tighten budgetary allocations, advertising on video sites has become increasingly common and many of those advertisements are longer than 20 seconds. Video clips are also used in advertising by vloggers who promote products. The average ad goes for 15-30 seconds.

Rise of amateurs
Unlike traditional movies largely dominated by studios, video clips are supplied by non-professionals.

In 2005, Chinese students Huang Yixin and Wei Wei, later known as "Back Dorm Boys", lip-synced to a song by the Backstreet Boys in a video uploaded to some clip websites and quickly became renowned. They appeared on television shows and concerts, and they were also granted a contract by a media company in Beijing, China for lip-syncing.

In May 2006, The Economist reported that 90% of video clips on YouTube came from amateurs, a few of whom were young comedians. It, in effect, also brought up amateur talents.

An earlier celebrity was David Elsewhere, who was a talent at popping and liquiding. His performance to Kraftwerk's song Expo 2000 at the Kollaboration talent show in 2001 was widely viewed on the Internet, and this subsequently led to him being hired for TV commercials and music videos. Not only did video clips submerge into the world of TV commercials and music videos, but it also became a popular form of entertainment and a hobby for people called "Vloggers" (video blog creators). Many professional video bloggers can be found on the Internet. Additionally, many notable amateur video bloggers also emerged during this time.

Citizen journalism
Citizen journalism video reporting dates back as early as the development of camcorders, but all videos were screened by the local media outlets of the time. This was until its spread was aided by free upload websites in which censorship was limited to make a vast number of videos available to anyone who wanted to view them. Scenes were rarely broadcast on television, and many first-witnessed scenes have since become publicly available.

In December 2003, videos in Hong Kong showing the bullying in De La Salle School outraged the public and raised a wide concern on school violence that led to the arrest of 11 students, 7 of which were later dismissed in 2020.

Notably, in December 2004, tourist videos of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami offered worldwide audiences the first scenes of the disaster.

Vlog
From late 2005 to early 2006, a new form of blogging emerged called a vlog. It is a blog that takes video as the primary content, which is often accompanied by supporting text, image, and additional metadata to provide context. Su Li Walker, an analyst with the Yankee Group, said that "like blogs, which have become an extension of traditional media, video blogs will be a supplement to traditional broadcasting." Regular entries are typically presented in reverse chronological order.

Convergence with traditional media
The evolving market for video clips garnered interest from traditional movie studios. In 2006, the producers of Lucky Number Slevin, a film with Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu and Bruce Willis, made an 8-minute clip for YouTube. Celebrities in traditional media have proven to confer more popularity in clip culture than most amateur video makers.

The emerging potential for success in web video caught the eye of some top entertainment executives in America, including former Disney executive and current head of the Tornante Company Michael Eisner. Eisner's Vuguru subdivision of Tornante partnered with Canadian media conglomerate Rogers Media on October 26, 2009, securing plans to produce upwards of 30 new web shows a year. Rogers Media would help fund and distribute Vuguru's upcoming productions, thereby solidifying a direct connection between old and new media.

Short-form videos
Short videos became popular in the 2010s. Snapchat started allowing users to share 10-second videos in 2012. Vine, which was launched in 2013 and restricted videos to a maximum length of six seconds, helped short-form videos achieve mainstream popularity and gave rise to a new generation of public figures such as Kurtis Conner, David Dobrik, Danny Gonzalez, Drew Gooden, Liza Koshy, Shawn Mendes, Jake Paul, Logan Paul, and Lele Pons. Instagram responded to Vine's popularity by adding the ability to share 15-second videos in 2013, and has since massively expanded its video functionality with numerous additional features, including Reels.

Following Vine's closure in 2017, most of its notable users began making longer videos on YouTube. After TikTok merged with Musical.ly in 2018, TikTok became the most widely used short-form video app and has since become one of the world's most popular apps of any kind. In 2020, Vine co-founder Dom Hoffman launched Vine's intended successor Byte (later renamed Clash and then Huddles). In 2021, as a response to the ever-increasing competition presented by TikTok, YouTube launched YouTube Shorts to host videos up to a maximum length of 60 seconds. YouTube Shorts collectively earned over 5 trillion views within six months.

title: Video clip