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  • image SM Adam volume 32/9

Reference number

SM Adam volume 32/9

Purpose

[3] Finished drawing for the south block of Fitzroy Square, c1790, as executed

Aspect

Above- Elevation of a building as SM Adam volume 4/102, with minor alterations. The windows at the first-storey level are balustraded, the central four-bay portico has a pyramidal roof, and this is surmounted by a crest bearing festoons and flanked by urns ornamented with ram masks. To the north there is an alternative terminating three bays. At the ground-storey level there is a central window set behind a Doric pilaster screen, at the first-storey level there is a central balustraded Ionic aedicule window, and this is flanked by giant Ionic pilasters. Above this there is a tripartite window, a frieze of fluting with a central tablet ornamented with rosettes and festoons, and a Diocletian window flanked by oculi. The terminating three bays are surmounted by reclining sphinxes Left and right- Elevations of three-storey, three-bay blocks with pyramidal roofs, and with three-quarter height windows at the ground-storey level, full-height windows at the first-storey level, half-height windows at the second storey level, and quarter-height windows in the upper register Below- Plans of the building facades

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

South side of Fitzroy Square (in the hand of William Adam)

Signed and dated

  • c1790
    c1790

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash within a single ruled border on laid paper (1626 x 536)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Robert Morison, with title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 37
King, 2001, Volume I, pp. 97-99
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.

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