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  • image SM Adam volume 33/02
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 33/02

Purpose

[9] Finished drawing for the east front of the College of Justice, 1791, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of the east front comprising the existing College of Justice and Robert Adam’s proposed additions, an alternative design to SM Adam volume 1/167. In the foreground is a two-storey building with a flat roof, and a four-storey turret with an ogee-shaped conical roof. The windows are in a mixture of rectangular, square, and pedimented surrounds and the principal entrance is arched and adorned with a classical architrave surmounted by raised statues and a broken-topped-pedimented opening above. To the right is a three-storey octagonal tower, the same as SM Adam volume 1/170, with the statues omitted and the added detailing to the second floor including a tripartite window divided by Tuscan columns within a recessed arch, with a waterleaf frieze and panels with guttae above. Abutting the tower is an arched opening and behind is a four-storey building with a hipped roof and arched windows on the third floor

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/2 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

East front of the Library &c towards the Parliament Square Edinburgh College of Justice / (verso) 1 Advocates Library at Edinr / 5 Pieces consisting of one Elevation of Front / 1 Section & General ground Plan. / two side Elevations / these are in a finished state / from No 2

Signed and dated

  • 1791
    Robt Adam Architect 1791

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash within a ruled border on laid paper (648x481)

Hand

Possibly
Adam office hand, possibly Robert Morison or John Robertson

Watermark

Footed P

Notes

This design is an alternative to SM Adam volume 1/167 and shows a different design for both the existing College of Justice building and the octagonal tower. In this design, Adam has removed a number of original features from the existing College of Justice building including the corner bartizan, the decorative balustrade and the surrounds to the windows and door but has kept the three-statue motif above the entrance, repeating the portico design from SM Adam volume 1/167.

Literature

Bolton, 1922, p. 11
Brown, 1989, p. 72
Kerr, 1998, pp. 4-7
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).