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  • image SM Adam volume 40/37

Reference number

SM Adam volume 40/37

Purpose

[5] Finished drawing for a greenhouse, 1759, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of the principal front of a one-and-a-half-storey, three-bay pedimented building, with a ten step stylobate, articulated by fluted Corinthian engaged columns, and with tripartite bays articulated by engaged Ionic columns, with the central bay containing a Venetian window. The walls are ornamented with panels of grisaille, and the are three acroteria supporting figurative sculptures

Scale

bar scale of 2/5 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

A Design for a Green house for Sir Nathaniel Curson at Kedleston / now Lord Scarsdale (in the hand of William Adam) / 45 (in pencil in a modern curatorial hand) and some dimensions given (verso) 1 / Lord Scarsdale

Signed and dated

  • 1759
    datable to 1759

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash within a single ruled border on laid paper (665 x 522)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly Agostino Brunias or Laurent-Benoît Dewez, with additions to the title inscription in an office hand and a number inscribed in pencil in an unknown modern curatorial hand

Watermark

VDL and fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 19
Harris, 1987, p. 71
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 219
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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).