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  • image SM Adam volume 10/107

Reference number

SM Adam volume 10/107

Purpose

[11] Alternative preliminary design for the Pall Mall (south) front, c1789, unexecuted

Aspect

Part-elevation of a three-storey, thirteen-bay building, with the central bay and the six-bay right-hand block shown. The central bay has a balustraded, projecting portico, articulated by paired Tuscan columns, raised on plinths ornamented with ram masks and festoons. Within the portico there is a stepped entrance with a fanlight, set within a relieving arch. The capitals are fluted and there is a frieze of enclosed rosettes(?) All this is surmounted by a drum ornamented with rosettes and festoons, and supporting a stepped, ribbed dome with a spire. The right-hand block has a hipped roof, with statuary surmounting the roof line. At the ground-storey level there is an arcade, formed with wide, segmental-headed openings, flanked by entrances with fanlights. At the first-storey level there are balustraded windows, and this is surmounted by three-quarter-height windows, and by half-height windows in the upper register

Scale

bar scale of 1 inch to 10 feet

Signed and dated

  • c1789
    c1789

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (289 x 252)

Hand

Probably
Robert Adam

Watermark

PORTAL & BRIDGES

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 40
Sheppard, 1960, Volume XXIX, (i), p. 249
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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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.

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