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  • image SM Adam volume 1/164

Reference number

SM Adam volume 1/164

Purpose

[10] Preliminary design for a reservoir, c1774, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a three-bay, rusticated reservoir building raised on a stylobate, with urns ornamenting the corners. The reservoir has a central arch, with a mask forming the keystone. There is a frieze of rusticated icicles, with a central tablet above, and the spandrels are ornamented with lion masks. Within the arch, there is a reclining, draped figure, supported by a socle base, ornamented with strigilation, a central rosette and ram masks. All this is flanked by piers, with rusticated, blocked Doric columns and niches containing statuary

Scale

to a scale

Signed and dated

  • c1774
    c1774

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (357 x 171)

Hand

Probably
Robert Adam

Watermark

IVILLEDARY

Literature

King, 2001, Volume II, p. 223
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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).