[129] Finished drawing for the ceiling for the drawing room in an unknown house, 1769; it is not known if this design was executed

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - The Adelphi, London: designs for a speculative complex built by William Adam & Co., 1768-84 (168)
      - Adam Street
        Unknown houses, Adam Street
        Preliminary design, design and finished drawing for the ceiling for the drawing room in an unknown house, 1769; it is not known if this design was executed (3)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 13/19

Purpose

[129] Finished drawing for the ceiling for the drawing room in an unknown house, 1769; it is not known if this design was executed

Aspect

Plan of a rectangular ceiling with a central patera, encircled by a fan of unlobed acanthus leaves, and set within a circular frame, encircled by acanthus leaves alternating with scrolled hearts containing medallions, rinceaux, and anthemia, all set within a fluted circular frame with an apron of festoons and rosettes, attended by four large vesica-shaped compartments containing cameos, rinceaux, and calyx, and within a border ornamented with miniature rosettes, and the whole is flanked by semicircular compartments containing segmental patera encircled by fans of unlobed acanthus, and the whole has a rectangular border of Vitruvian scroll

Scale

bar scale of ¾ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Cieling of the Drawing room at No. _ Adam Street Adelphi.

Signed and dated

1769
1769

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured washes including pink, olive green and violet on laid paper (572 x 416)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly Giuseppe Manocchi, William Hamilton or Joseph Bonomi

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 33
Rowan, 2007, p. 53
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Vaulting Ambition: The Adam Brothers, Contractors to the Metropolis in the Reign of George III, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 14 September 2007 - 12 January 2008; The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum, Cheltenham, 19 April - 24 May 2008; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 24 October - 13 December 2008

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).