[38] Design for a chimneypiece for the second drawing room, 1775, as executed

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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)
      - Design for a chimneypiece for the second drawing room, 1775, as executed (1)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 23/67

Purpose

[38] Design for a chimneypiece for the second drawing room, 1775, as executed

Aspect

Elevation of a chimneypiece with a lining bordered by foil, and the stiles ornamented with an urn, wreaths, a tapered support bearing a further urn with drop calyx and pendent peltoid shields. This is flanked by bands ornamented with flora. The capitals contain cameos and the frieze is ornamented with anthemia and rosettes alternating with calyx linked with beading. Above this there is a band of laurel leaf tips, and there is a central figurative tablet depicting a chariot drawn by lions ridden by putti

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/2 inches to 1 foot

Inscribed

Chimney Piece for the second Drawing room at Lady Home's in Portman Square / 67

Signed and dated

Feb 1775
Adelphi / 1st. Febry 1775.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured washes including Indian yellow, pink, cerulean blue and Venetian red on laid paper (406 x 291)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi

Verso

(In modern curatorial hand) vol 23 67 66

Watermark

LVG surmounted fleur-de-lis within a crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 48
Hussey and Oswald, 1934, pp. 17, 26
Whinney, 1969, pp. 32, 65
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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