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  • image SM Adam volume 37/88

Reference number

SM Adam volume 37/88

Purpose

[15] Finished drawing for an octagonal house, 1779, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a three-storey, nine-bay building, with a central entrance set within a balustraded Tuscan portico, with a frieze ornamented with rosette roundels. On the first storey there are balustraded Venetian windows, set within relieving arches, and these are flanked by full-height windows. On the second storey there is a string course of guilloche, and three-quarter height windows. Every three bays are flanked by niches containing urns, with paired Corinthian columns above, and the columns are surmounted by pedestals supporting sphinxes. The bays flanking the central three bays are set at an angle, and the roof is surmounted by an octagonal pediment ornamented with rosettes and festoons of husks

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/2 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Elevation of a New Design for John Robinson Esq.r proposed to be built at Syon Hill (underwritten in pencil) / No. 64 (brown ink) / Mr. R: has a fair copy (brown ink)

Signed and dated

  • November 1779
    Adelphi / 18.t Nov.r 1779

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash within a single ruled border on laid paper (590 x 444)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi or Robert Morison

Verso

1 / 1

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index, p. 18
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 134
Rowan, 1985, p. 54
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).