Inscribed
Inscribed in ink on drawing 173
verso inscribed in ink in a contemporary hand (annotated on drawing, from top): chambre pour /La Te et la Jeus/ Endroit pour les/ Fruits et des ju[?] les/ musique/ Chambres a/ jouer il au [?] / Desau le cuisine / Directeur de Concert / Grand / niche a / jouer ou - [?] / d'allondre les / Dances / Chambre de / Danse / Fruit. En bas et / Musique en haut / Salle interiure / Salle enterieure / orchestre / Salle du / Musique / Chambres / du Livres / de / Musique
Signed and dated
- Undated, probably 1755 - 56
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, pen
205 x 255
Hand
Robert Adam
Verso
Capriccio in pencil and pen showing the plan for a building with five-bay apsidal portico with projecting three-bay wings. The interior is divided into three large halls, that are identified (see inscription) with a staircase in the centre approached through columns. This plan is for some kind of music pavilion, for which Adam vol.55/179 verso may be a preliminary scheme; a similar composition is used on a grander scale for Robert Adam's 'Plan of an Opera house for an isolated/Situation' (see Adam vol.10/166). This drawing overlays a similar plan. Beside this is a detail of part of a plan of columns and niches.
The French titles would suggest the influence of either Laurent-Benoít Dewez (1731-1812) or Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820).
Watermark
fleur de lys in circle (trimmed)
Notes
The hatched style of draughtsmanship in this elevation is similar to several others in this volume and can most closely be compared with the unfinished elevation in Adam vol.55/138 verso. The small section in pencil probably shows the interior of one of the halls in the pavilion on the verso.
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
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).
