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Purpose
Signed and dated
- c1772
Notes
This design for a picture frame is dated 27th October 1772, suggesting that the earlier attribution to John Manners, who died in 1770, is incorrect, and that his son, Charles was Adam’s patron. The iconography within the design, however, offers some doubt about the accuracy of the date on this drawing. The design makes use of Rutland unicorns (unicorns are the supporters to the Rutland arms), as well as military trophies. John, but not Charles, was a military man. Either the drawing is incorrectly dated and it was indeed commissioned by the John, prior to his death in 1770, or the design was commissioned by Charles, in 1772, possibly for a portrait of his military father. The intended location for this frame is not known, and it is not known to have been executed.
Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index pp. 55, 72; E. Harris, The furniture of Robert Adam, 1963, Index p. 59; J. Ingamells, A dictionary of British and Irish travellers in Italy: 1701-1800, 1997, p. 418; C. Mosley (ed.), Burke's peerage, baronetage & knightage, 2003, p. 3446-50; History of Parliament online: 'Manners, John, Mq. of Granby (1721-70)', and 'Charles Manners, 4th Duke of Rutland (1754-87)'
Frances Sands, 2013
Level
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).