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  • image SM Adam volume 33/04
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 33/04

Purpose

[10] Finished drawing for a section through the College of Justice, 1791, unexecuted

Aspect

Axial section showing a three-storey library in an octagonal tower next to a four-storey staircase and a double-height hall lined with bookcases. The library on the principal floor is double height with a domed ceiling. The libraries on each floor are divided by columns and pilasters, each with a central chimneypiece. The staircase is divided by piers on each level except for the principal floor where it is divided by columns on raised plinths with volute capitals. Below the hall is a large room with double doors within a pedimented moulded architrave with consoles. The section also shows the portico to the east front, and the loggia and arcade to the west front. The different colour washes denote the building material

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/2 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Section from East to West through the Octagon Building next the Parliament Square, The Great Staircase leading to the Library / and one side of the Hall from the West Street showing the Arcade & Loggia to the front Edinburgh

Signed and dated

  • 1791
    Robt Adam Architect 1791

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash, and coloured wash including lemon yellow and pink within a ruled border on laid paper (643x477)

Hand

Possibly
Adam office hand, possibly Robert Morison or John Robertson

Literature

Bolton, 1922, p. 11
Brown, 1989, p. 73
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).