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  • image SM Adam volume 40/71
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 40/71

Purpose

[20] Unfinished design for the music room, 1773, as executed with minor alterations

Aspect

Plan and laid-out wall-elevations of an apsidal ended music room, with a three-bay bow window at one end. The window is flanked by ornamental panels supporting four branch candelabra in the form of lyres. The panels are embellished with calyx, arabesques supporting urns, and medallions. The elevation to the left contains a central organ, with a cabinet ornamented with panels containing rosette roundels, and bordered with Vitruvian scroll. Above this there is a band of fluting and the pipes of the organ are set within a circular, draped frame. At the base of the frame there is a crest flanked by putti and pedestals supporting draped figures bearing instruments. The organ has a frieze of rosette roundels, with a central medallion, and it is surmounted by a reclining figure. The organ is flanked by ornamental panels supporting four branch candelabra in the form of lyres, and doorways with portrait overdoors. The right-hand elevation contains a central chimneypiece with an overmantel mirror frame flanked by candelabra, and all this is as SM Adam volume 20/132. The chimneypiece is flanked by figurative panels

Scale

bar scale of 3 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Plan & Section of the Music Room / (and in the hand of William Adam) in Sir Watkin Williams Wynns / House St James Square / Pannells on each side of Chimney are (pencil) / intended for Pictures of St Cecilia &t – (pencil) / as mentioned in the Memorandum (pencil) / Over Doors on each side of Organ was proposed (pencil) / also to have Heads of great Musicians (pencil) / over the Door at the End the Muses that honor (pencil) / the Torch of Orphius. (pencil) / The other Pannells to have Stucco Ornaments (pencil) / with Lyre Girandols introduced (pencil) / faint pencil inscription / purple (pencil) / faint pencil inscription / A (pencil) / Cecilia (pencil) / white (pencil) / 66 (pencil)

Signed and dated

  • August 1773
    Adelphi August 24.t 1773.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured washes including violet, olive green and cerulean blue on laid paper (523 x 645)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly William Hamilton or Joseph Bonomi, with part title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 49
King, 2001, Volume I, p. 276
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).