[25] Finished drawing for a fountain, 1776, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Country houses
  - Mamhead, Ashcombe, Devon: designs for interior decoration, alterations to the house, a garden seat, a temple and stable offices for the 1st Earl of Lisburne, 1767-80 (32)
    - Preliminary designs and finished drawing for a fountain, 1776, unexecuted (3)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 19/155

Purpose

[25] Finished drawing for a fountain, 1776, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan and elevation of a spring, composed of a rectangular stylobate, with three steps to either side flanked by sculpted sphinxes, with a central segmental pool for the spring water at the front, with a central lion mask fountain head, and to the rear is a segmental ruined single-storey, three-bay temple, articulated by fluted Doric pilasters and engaged columns, with an arch in the central bay, surmounted by a pediment, and ornamented with a rectangular figurative panel, flanked by medallions in the openings in the end bays

Scale

bar scale of 1/3 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Design of a Rustick Building proposed t be built near a Spring of Water / at Mamhead The Seat of The Earl of Lisburne and some measurements given

Signed and dated

22/11/1776
22nd Novr 1776

Medium and dimensions

Pen and wash on laid paper (408 x 627)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly Robert Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 22
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 222
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Visions of Ruin: Architectural fantasies & designs for garden follies, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 2 July - 28 August 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).