[11] Preliminary design for the west front of a house, c1783, 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 21/67

Purpose

[11] Preliminary design for the west front of a house, c1783, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a two-and-a-half storey, five-bay building, with a part-sunken basement, and with the central three bays receding. There is a central, stepped entrance set within a circular, Tuscan portico, and this is flanked by balustraded Tuscan screens. At the first-storey level there is a central entrance, set within an apse, and with a Tuscan screen and balustraded, semi-circular balcony, and this is flanked by balustraded aedicule windows. In the upper register there are half-height windows. The first and fifth bays are projecting, with tripartite windows in the basement-storey level. At the ground-storey level there are Venetian windows set within relieving arches, and this is surmounted by tripartite, pedimented windows, and with half-height windows in the upper register

Scale

not to scale

Signed and dated

c1783
c1783

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (285 x 180)

Hand

Probably
Robert Adam

Watermark

Britannia within a crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, pp. 103-4, Index, p. 45
Rowan, 1985, p. 138
King, 2001, Volume II, pp. 57, 102-6, 130
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.

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