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  • image SM Adam volume 1/22

Reference number

SM Adam volume 1/22

Purpose

Preliminary design for an illumination, c.1761

Aspect

Elevation of an illumination for a three-storey, five-bay building with a hipped roof, with a central pyramid surmounted by Britannia, decorated with Royal insignia, and flanked by the Royal supporters of a lion and unicorn

Scale

bar scale of 1 8/10 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

GEORGE III REX / CHARLOTTE REGINA

Signed and dated

  • c.1761
    c.1761

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (247x348)

Hand

probably Adam, Robert (1728--1792), architect
Robert Adam

Notes

This appears to be a design for an illumination to celebrate the marriage of King George III and Charlotte Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1761.

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).