[13] Design for the principal front of a house, 1783, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Projects known only by patron
  - Earl of Findlater, designs for a town house for an unknown location, possibly Portland Place, London, c1783, unexecuted (17)
    - Preliminary design, designs and finished drawing for the west front of a house, c1783, unexecuted (4)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 36/36

Purpose

[13] Design for the principal front of a house, 1783, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a two-and-a-half-storey, five-bay house as SM Adam volume 36/37, with alterations including the addition of a string course of Vitruvian scroll above the first-storey level, Tuscan eaves, and with the central bay surmounted by a tablet inscribed Findlater House, which supports the Findlater arms flanked by recumbent lions. Above the ground-storey tripartite windows in the first and fifth bays there are relief urns ornamenting the heads of the relieving arches

Scale

bar scale of 1 3/4 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Elevation towards the Court of a Town house for The Right Hon.ble The Earl of Findlater & Seafield / (and in the hand of Robert Adam, red ink) A Copy of this given to my Lord / 13.t Sep.r 1789 the Arms at top [_ _ _]font(?) / 23

Signed and dated

August 1783
Adelphi / 27.t Aug.st 1783

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (522 x 368)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Robert Morison, with notation in the hand of Robert Adam

Verso

no 1 / no 1 / 2 Elevations & [_] Ground plans / Earl of Findlater Town House (obscured where affixed)

Watermark

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, pp. 103-4, Index, p. 45
Rowan, 1985, p. 138
King, 2001, Volume II, pp. 57, 102-6, 130, pl. 114
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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).