[9] Finished drawing for the principal elevation, c1772-79

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Public buildings
  - Register House, Princes Street, Edinburgh: executed, including unexecuted designs for a terrace on Leith Street, a Deputy Ranger’s House, and a guard house, 1772-92 (28)
    - Alternative designs for the building, c1772-79, executed with alterations (13)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 30/1

Purpose

[9] Finished drawing for the principal elevation, c1772-79

Aspect

Elevation of the south (principal) front of a two-storey, thirteen-bay building, with a flat roof, surmounted by a large drum and dome, with a rusticated ground storey, containing windows within relieving arches, and with the central three bays projecting, with a central door accessed by a straight flight of steps, and with the bays above in the first storey with balustraded windows surmouted by panels containing festoons, and articulated by fluted engaged Corinthian columns supporting a pediment, with a medallion containing the royal coat of arms in the tympanum, and the central three bays are flanked by four-bay links, and single-bay projecting pavilions, with Venetian windows within relieving arches on the first storey, flanked by fluted engaged Corinthian columns, and the roofs balustraded, and surmounted by bell towers

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/2 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Elevation of the South Front of a Building for the Register Office in Scotland and some measurements given (verso) Register Office for Scotland right ones

Signed and dated

1772-79
datable to c1772-79

Medium and dimensions

Pen and wash within a single ruled border on laid paper (944 x 537)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly William Hamilton or Joseph Bonomi

Watermark

D&[CBLAUW] (on affixed portion)

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 11
For a full list of literature reference see scheme notes.

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

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).