It is surprising that Robert Adam's splendid interiors for Bolton House on Russell Square have hitherto escaped attention. Though the house is no longer there, his designs are all preserved in Sir John Soane's Museum and are among the most attractive in the Adam collection. Even more surprising, however, is the discovery of parts of Bolton House in New York City, in the Center for Inter American Relations on the corner of Park Avenue and 68th Street.

In 1981 Jennifer Watson published a Shorter Notice in this Magazine identifying the artist and subject of a large painting formerly attributed to George Romney and at various times called Mars and Venus or Thetis pleading with Achilles (Fig. 15). She noted that Timothy Clifford had found an engraving in the British Museum by Bartolozzi (Fig. 16) which identified the artist as the largely forgotten William Artaud (1763- 1823). The engraving also made clear that this enormous painting, stored in the basement of the Yale Center for British Art on account of its size (over 81/2 by 6 feet) and its problematic attribution, was only the left half of a once even larger canvas representing the Triumph of Mercy from William Collins's poem Ode to Mercy of 1746. Watson briefly summarised what was generally known about Artaud, noting that A.C. Sewter had deposited a complete and annotated typescript of further material on Artaud in Manchester University Library, but that she had not had the opportunity to examine it.'

On 4th February 1993 a copy of the first (1845) edition of Richard Ford's Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain came up for sale at Swann Galleries, New York, and was acquired by the author of this article.* Bound into it are a series of ten letters from Ford to the art dealer, Dominic Colnaghi (1790-1879), nine of them written from Spain between July 1831 and December 1832, and one from Southernhay, Exeter, in March 1834 (see Appendix I, below).' They give a fascinating account of Ford's purchases of pictures in Spain, detailing those he despatched to Colnaghi for safe keeping before they were sent on to Ford's mother's house at 123 Park Street, Grosvenor Square. Read in conjunction with the provenances given in the catalogue of Ford's pictures sold at Rainy's Rooms on 9th June 1836, as lots 28-54 (see Appendix II, below),2 they throw considerable light on his progress as a collector of Spanish art. They also provide fresh in- formation on Ford as friend and patron of the artist John Frederick Lewis.

While the engineering achievements of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59) are famous, it is less well known that he was also a patron of the arts. In the late 1840s he commissioned a set of paintings of Shakespearean subjects from some of the most distinguished English artists of his day, including Charles West Cope, Augustus Leopold Egg, Edwin Landseer, Frederick Richard Lee, Charles Robert Leslie, and Clarkson Stanfield (see the Appendix below). These were intended for display in the dining room of his house in Duke St, St James's,' which would appear to have become known as the 'Shakespeare Room'2 by the time of his death, if not earlier. This room was the practical expression of enthusiasm for the modern British school of painting, and provides an example of the type of support for the arts that developed among the wealthy professional middle classes during Brunel's lifetime.3