[35] Alternative design for a ceiling for the second drawing room, 1775, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - Home House, Portman Square, number 17 (now 20), London, for the Countess of Home, 1775-78 (73)
      - Alternative preliminary design and design, record drawing and finished drawing for a ceiling for the second drawing room, 1775 (4)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 12/165

Purpose

[35] Alternative design for a ceiling for the second drawing room, 1775, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of a tripartite ceiling with an additional alcove containing niches. The ceiling has a central square compartment ornamented with a medallion enclosed within a fan. Beyond this there are ribbons and festoons with suspended tablets depicting Pegasi. All this is encircled by rosettes enclosed within rope moulding, and this is set within a square compartment with corner roundels. The roundels are ornamented with rosettes enclosed within wreaths of husks surrounded by thyrsi, and all this is surrounded by festoons of husks. Beyond this there are four figurative tablets and corner medallions. The square compartment is bordered by rosettes enclosed within figure-of-eight wreaths and is flanked by strips of rosettes and fluting. This is flanked by further compartments ornamented with flora enclosed within wreaths. The alcove has a tripartite design, with a central compartment ornamented with a patera enclosed within a lozenge and an oval band of calyx. This is flanked by square compartments ornamented with a rosette and crossed calyx enclosed within a roundel and open lozenge

Scale

bar scale of 6 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Cieling for the Drawing room at Lady Home's in Portman Square- / not executed

Signed and dated

March 1775
Adelphi / 25. March 1775

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured washes including olive green, cerulean blue and pink on laid paper (600 x 447)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi

Verso

(Modern curatorial hand, pencil) vol. 12. 165 / 64

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 48
Hussey and Oswald, 1934, p. 26
Whinney, 1969, pp. 48-50, 64
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Original Drawings of Robert and James Adam, Kenwood House, London, 1953

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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