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  • image Adam vol.55/174
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Reference number

Adam vol.55/174

Purpose

Academic study showing a symmetrical pavilion with stepped dome on drum above a coffered and apsidal entrance on steps, between single-bay projecting wings. These are linked by a three-bay colonnade to projecting single-bays with sculpture above.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 174

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1756 - 57

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, grey wash 124 x 171

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

According to Fleming, this is a 'Design for temple or public building'; he dates the drawing 1756-7, and describes it as an example of his [Robert Adam's] recent architectural drawings '... recalling the work of his French contemporaries in Rome, notably Marie-Jean Peyre, whom he probably knew though he never mentions him in his letters...' (J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.229). The drawing, and the pencil under-drawing, may be another example of the exercises in which Laurent-Benoít Dewez (1731-1812) participated based on the design attributed to him in Adam vol.55/168, although it may perhaps be closer to 55/170. There is a version of this composition, without the sculptural figures, in the Italian section in the Dewez drawings in the Rijksarchief, Brussels, Belgium (see Dewez 1/13).

Literature

Rep. J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, pl.70.

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).