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Reference number

Adam vol.9/44

Purpose

Academic study for the plan for an alternative central island for a large public building composed as a rectangular court with hemicycle ends.

Aspect

Plan

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 44

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 or 56

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, grey wash97 x 159

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

This is a more complex plan than that shown as the rectangular central section of Adam vol.9/43, and is an alternative version. The entrance here is through a triple portico into a hall, ahead of which is a room of Greek Cross plan. The rooms on either side are symmetrically organised, terminating in small pavilions that are explored in other schemes in this volume, particularly Adam vol.9/36. The pencil or chalk under-drawing differs considerably from the ink composition.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Robert Adam, The Creative Mind: from the Sketch to the Finished Drawing, Sir John Soane's Museum, 4 October 1996 - 1 March 1997; The Frick Collection, New York, December 1997 - April 1998; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, May - June 1998; The Octagon Museum, Washington, July 1998 - January 1999; Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, February - March 1999
The Adam Brothers in Rome: Drawings from the Grand Tour, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 25 September 2008 - 14 February 2009

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).