[1] Design for the proscenium, 1775; it is not known if this design was executed

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Commercial buildings
  - Drury Lane Theatre, Bridges (later Catherine) Street, London: designs for interior decoration for David Garrick, 1775 (3)
    - Design for the proscenium, 1775; it is not known if this design was executed

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 27/85

Purpose

[1] Design for the proscenium, 1775; it is not known if this design was executed

Aspect

Elevation of a proscenium, flanked by sections of three-storey boxes, and with an architrave ornamented with drops of calyx up each side, and with calyx alternating with miniature rosettes in the lintel, with a central tablet containing a portrait medallion of Shakespeare, flanked by winged figures, and with an apron of drapery

Scale

bar scale of 3 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Method proposed for finishing the Front of the Stage which covers the first Curtain and is never changed, The Apotheosis of Shakespear (sic) / by the Tragic & Comic Muses / Box / Box / Box / Stage

Signed and dated

08/05/1775
Adelphi / May 8th 1775

Medium and dimensions

Pen and coloured washes including pink and Indian yellow on laid paper (457 x 328)

Hand

Adam office hand, either Joseph Bonomi or Robert Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 37
Survey of London, 1970, pl. 11a
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

'The Cloud-Capped Towers': Shakespeare in Soane's Architectural Imagination, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 21 April - 8 October 2016

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).