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Reference number

Adam vol.56/45

Purpose

Unfinished study for part of a ceiling compartment, showing two rectangular panels of anthemion decoration, and at the right angle where the two meet, a square panel with a head in profile; numerous pen tryouts.

Aspect

Ceiling plan, detail

Inscribed

Inscribed in red ink on both drawing and album leaf 45

Signed and dated

  • Undated

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil343 x 226

Hand

James Adam, office of (attributed to), after James Byres

Notes

This drawing, in both subject and style, may relate to those associated with the unfinished designs after James Byres (1734-1817) found in Adam volume 26, especially Adam vol.26/174. It is probably an Adam office copy after Byres, as is also suggested by the pen tryouts at the top and bottom of the sheet. (For the connection between James Adam and Byres, see J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.378.) The composition of the decoration is similar to that designed by Alessandro Algardi in the Villa Doria Pamphilj, Rome. There are companion drawings in Adam vol.56/46-48.

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).