[11] Finished drawing for the ceiling in the library, 1767, executed with minor alterations

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Country houses
  - Kenwood, Hampstead, London: designs for the house and park for William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, 1764-83 (55)
    - House and interior
      - Finished drawing and record drawing for the ceiling in the library, 1767, executed with minor alterations (2)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 11/112

Purpose

[11] Finished drawing for the ceiling in the library, 1767, executed with minor alterations

Aspect

Plan of a compartmental barrel-vaulted ceiling with apsidal ends, and a border of anthemia and tubular flowers. The central flat has a central oval compartment containing an oval medallion, encircled by small oval medallions, and framed by compartments containing lunette and square figurative panels, further medallions and arabesques. The semi-domes in the apses are ornamented with arabesques and medallions

Scale

bar scale of 1/2 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Cieling of the Library at Kenwood in Middlesex (in the hand of William Adam) / and in pencil in the hand of Arthur Bolton) As finished in 6th Plate [plate 15] in / Works. Very like. Only for [ _ _ _ _ _ _ / _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ]. Pink + Green both / [ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ] ATB / (and in feint pencil in the hand of Robert Adam) B / Soffit of the Collumns / No 4 / A White / O Green / H Red / D / F / A / O / C / A / A Gold / O Red / C Green / D Red / E White / The Frieze Picked in Red darker than the Red in ye Cieling / The Sides of the Room light Green / And The Fans of the Recesses Blue / X Blue / A Green / Δ White / X Blue (verso) 112 / Lord Mansfield

Signed and dated

1767
1767

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and pink and verdigris washes on laid paper (895 x 528)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly William Hamilton, with title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Watermark

XD&BC within a cartouche and D&BCDAUW

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 19
Stillman, 1966, p. 71
Beard, 1978, pp. 47, 62
Bryant, 1990, p. 15
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Original Drawings of Robert and James Adam, Kenwood House, London, 1953

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).