[2] Finished drawing for a curtain wall around an observatory, c1770, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Country houses
  - The Grove, Muswell Hill, Greater London: unexecuted designs for a curtain wall around an observatory, and interior decoration for a dressing room, for the Hon. Topham Beauclerk, 1770 (6)
    - Finished drawings for a curtain wall around an observatory, c1770, unexecuted (2)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 30/37

Purpose

[2] Finished drawing for a curtain wall around an observatory, c1770, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a curved screen wall, ornamented with niches and Doric pilasters, either side of a portico of four Doric columns surmounted by a pediment with a central acroterion. A frieze of enclosed rosettes and fluting runs across the screen wall and the portico. The portico is flanked on either side by a ramp with iron railings running down either side of an arched opening, which presumably provides fenestration for a sunken basement area

Scale

bar scale of 1/4 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Screen round the Observatory at Muswell Hill / for Topham Beauclerk Esqr (in the hand of William Adam)

Signed and dated

c1770
datable to c1770

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash within a single ruled border on laid paper (496 x 297)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly William Hamilton or Joseph Bonom, with addition to title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 23
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 218
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

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.

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