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  • image Adam vol.9/17

Reference number

Adam vol.9/17

Purpose

Academic study showing two sketch plans. The larger is a plan for a group of pavilions in an an oval court, composed of an outer and inner colonnade linking large and small pavilions in a lateral composition terminating in square pavilions. Below this is a small unfinished sketch for a plan for a courtyarded building with octagonal pavilions at each corner.

Aspect

Plansverso elevations

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 17verso inscribed in ink in a contemporary hand Cela Suffit/ That is enough That is enuff there is enough

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 - 56.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil311 x 203

Hand

recto Laurent-Benoît Dewez (attributed to) verso Robert Adam

Verso

Three sketch elevations in black chalk of tiered mausolea or temples, one with a spire and on a rusticated basement, the other two with shallow, stepped domes above arcades. The mausolea may be compared with a more original Adam scheme in Adam volume 55/150. Also shown is a centralised plan, possibly for a mausoleum, of the Greek Cross type, and, in pen, is an outline landscape with conifers, a bridge and a building. These drawings are certainly in Robert Adam's hand and may be compared with his tower drawings in Adam vol.55/20. The inscription is likely to be one of Adam's two copyists trying their English, spelt phonetically, or Dewez himself, who spoke little English before coming to London (see J. Fleming, Robert Adam And His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.216).

Watermark

C.& I. Honig

Notes

There are other exercises on this theme of a semi-circular court and pavilions in Adam vol.9/51, 52, 62; also in 9/241 in the later section of this volume. The scale of the composition relates it to the large designs in Adam vol.9/43 and 44 that resemble the Roman Baths. While the drawings on the verso are in Robert Adam's hand, the scheme here may be attributed to Laurent-Benoít Dewez (1721-1813).

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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.

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