Take a chair: for his latest exhibition, Hugh Buchanan has depicted furniture by Robert Adam at Osterley and Syon. Eileen Harris examines the remarkable sympathy between architect and artist

Apollo, Nov, 2004 by Eileen Harris

The fact that the fourteen watercolour and acrylic paintings in Hugh Buchanan's current exhibition at the Francis Kyle Gallery are set in the drawing-rooms of two Robert Adam houses, Osterley and Syon, is unlikely to be recognised by more than a handful of historians of eighteenth century architecture and furniture, and does nof contribute anything to our appreciation of them. On the contrary, it is their ambiguity of place and scale that makes them so intriguing.

They are nof paintings of interiors, a genre for which Buchanan is well known and much admired. Their subject is furniture and above all chairs, gilt arm chairs to be precise. The Syon ones are covered with faded crimson silk-damask of the same pattern as the curtains that are the subject of three other paintings in the show; and those at Osterley with pristine rose coloured Gobelins tapestries depicting Boucher's Jeux d'enfants in oval medallions on the backs and bold floral compositions on the seats. Unlike the nostalgia conveyed by the Syon furniture and by the faded tapestry chairs cowering against a wall at Newby Hall, which was the centrepiece of last year's show, the Osterley chairs are vibrant and full of life.

Buchanan is quofed as saying that 'the chairs suggest a human element'. In fact, they are the only pieces of furniture specially designed for the human body. Having backs is what distinguishes them from stools and benches, which are akin to tables and bedsteads. Given their components--two arms, four legs, seats and backs--it is hardly surprising that chairs should be a key test of an artist's skill in perspective drawing.

Buchanan's mastery of perspective is expressed in his predilection for oblique and unusual viewpoints that reveal only part of his subjects. This penchant he shares with Robert Adam, who believed that 'the more you keep people from seeing the re(ire their imaginations have occasion to work'. The two also share a preoccupation with the effects of light and shade, which are in some ways more dramatic in Buchanan's portrayal of the Osterley chairs than in his view of Adam's sculpture gallery at Newby shown last year.

The emptiness of his chairs--alone or in pairs, seen close-up from below or above is quite suggestive, a little spooky and unsettling. The solitary chair at an open door is clearly expecting an occupant; but what about the same chair before a closed door? The two chairs facing left towards the light seem to be waiting for a show to begin; another pair seen from below loom tip in a defiant and threatening manner, made all the more disturbing by the bleaching frontal light and the distorted perspective in which the walls appear to be falling backwards.

Although Buchanan manages skilfully to capture the different textures of the tapestries, the carved and gilt-wood chair frames, mahogany doors and ormolu door-furniture, realism is nof what he is about. In reality, the Osterley chairs are small and refined; in Buchanan's large watercolours (the largest 100 by 148 cm) they are, in a manner of speaking, large>than life creations of his imagination. I am fascinated by them and look forward to seeing what he makes of the seat furniture at Kedleston. Bring on more chairs, please; the bigger the better.

'Hugh Buchanan and Robert Adam' is at the Francis Kyle Gallery, 9 Maddox Street, London (+44 [0] 20 7499 6870) from 10 November to 9 December.

Eileen Harris is the author of The Genius of Robert Adam: His Interiors (Yale, 2001).