[6] Finished drawing for a triumphal arch, gatehouses and screens, c1778, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Public buildings
  - Hyde Park Corner, London, designs for a triumphal arch, gatehouses and screens, c1778, unexecuted (18)
    - Preliminary designs, design and finished drawing for a triumphal arch, first design, c1778, unexecuted (6)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 28/4

Purpose

[6] Finished drawing for a triumphal arch, gatehouses and screens, c1778, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a triumphal archway, with flanking link bays and piers as SM Adam volume 1/14, but with an alternative composition of statuary surmounting the pediment. A central figure depicting Britannia is flanked by statuary depicting King George III and Queen Charlotte, with the piers beyond surmounted by a recumbent lion and unicorn. Beyond this there are entrance screens, with central three-bay archways as SM Adam volume 1/140, and this is flanked by three-bay, arcaded links, with a frieze of ox skulls and festoons, and with wrought iron fences. The screens terminate in single-bay Ionic pavilions, with a relieving arch containing a window. The pavilions are surmounted by a drum, pierced with oculi, ornamented with caryatids, all supporting a ribbed dome

Scale

bar scale of 1 3/8 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Design for a Gateway at Hide Park Corner with Side Gateways into Hide Park & Constitution Hill (in the hand of William Adam, underwritten in pencil) and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

c1778
c1778

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (1577 x 350)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi or Robert Morison, with title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Verso

1 / (and in modern curatorial hand, pencil) vol 28 no 4 / 81

Watermark

PVL

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index, p. 41
Rowan, 1988, p. 56
King, 2001, Volume II, pp. 38-9, 57, pl. 44
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Original Drawings of Robert and James Adam, Kenwood House, London, 1953

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).