Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Academic study for the plan of a rectangular square pavilion with three large and one small apsidal elevations and containing three circular rooms, two curved staircases and a long rectangular hall with screened apsidal ends.
  • image Adam vol.9/12
Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image
Print this image in A4 view  (icon indicating printer link)

Reference number

Adam vol.9/12

Purpose

Academic study for the plan of a rectangular square pavilion with three large and one small apsidal elevations and containing three circular rooms, two curved staircases and a long rectangular hall with screened apsidal ends.

Aspect

Plan

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 12

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil163 x 170

Hand

Robert Adam

Watermark

names

Notes

This is a variation of the plans found in Adam vol.9/7 and 11; it is drawn to approximately the same scale, and uses similar diagonal hatching. It is particularly close to 9/7 in the use of careful pencil guidelines. There is a more complex version in Adam vol.9/14. The rather cumbersome draughtsmanship suggests that it belongs to the early period of 1755. There is a version of this scheme by Laurent-Benoít Dewez (1731-1812) in his drawings in the Rijksarchief, Brussels (thirteen albums of which one contains 70 'Dessins d'Italie'; see Dewez 1/12). There is a less academic version of this plan in Adam vol.9/97 that has dimensions and room names as well as an elevation. The motif of the double apse later appears in Robert Adam's design for The Hill, Putney, Surrey, of 1786/7 and more exotically in his cottage orné for General Hervey at Ickworth, Suffolk (see Adam vol.43/21). The drawing shows several pen alterations; the elevation in pencil in Adam vol.9/145 is derived from this plan.

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).