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  • image SM Adam volume 28/16
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 28/16

Purpose

[14] Design for the Pall Mall (south) front, c1789, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a three-storey, thirteen-bay building, with the central bay forming a projecting, balustraded, portico, articulated by paired Tuscan columns, supported by plinths ornamented with rosettes, ram masks and paterae. Beyond this there is a stepped entrance surmounted by a fan light, set within an apse with a coffered ceiling. There is a string course of rope moulding, and above this there are reclining, winged figures supporting instruments. The portico has fluted capitals which are ornamented alternatively with a a peltoid shield and an urn crossed with daggers, and there is a frieze of scrolled hearts enclosing anthemia. All this is surmounted by a drum ornamented with rosettes and festoons, and supporting a stepped dome with an oculus. The central bay is flanked by six-bay blocks, with an arcade formed with tripartite entrances, set with Tuscan pilaster screens and surmounted by fanlights, and these are flanked by further entrances supporting fanlights, set within relieving arches. At the first storey level there are tripartite, balustraded windows, with Ionic screens, surmounted by small rectangular windows and Diocletian windows in the upper register, all set within relieving arches. Beyond this, giant Tuscan columns flank further windows, surmounted by a string course of rope moulding and figurative roundels, and with half-height windows flanked by short pilasters in the upper register

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Entry to the Opera House from Pall Mall / Elevation of a [_ _ _ _] [_ _ _ _ _] Building towards Pall Mall lying [_ _ _ _ _ _] of the opera between the Haymarket [_ _ _ _ _] proposed to contain six shops (in pencil) / [_ _ _ _] [_ _ _ _] shop [_ _ _ _] [_ _] [_ _ _] Haymarket with a new proposed entry to the opera house for the use of the Actors & Actresses & other people belonging to the Theatre (in pencil) / a good con[_ _ _ _ _ _] by adding second [?] [_ _ _ _] to the Pa[_ _ _] street & [_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _] reordering the communication between Charing cross to all the streets leading to Pall Mall (in pencil) / [_ _ _ _ _] [_ _] [_ _ _ _] [_ _ _ _] [_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _] [_ _ _] [_ _ _ _] & from Carlton House (in pencil) and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • c1789
    c1789

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (882 x 521)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Robert Morison or Daniel Robertson

Verso

opera (?) (cut) / 1

Watermark

PVL

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

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

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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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