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  • image SM Adam volume 21/83
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 21/83

Purpose

[2] Preliminary designs for the rear (south) front, principal (north) front and first storey of the library, c1760, unexecuted

Aspect

Above – Elevation of the rear (south) front showing a five-bay building, with acroteria along the roof line and rustication at basement storey. The central three bays form a projecting, two-and-a-half-storey portico, with a central arched window, set behind a Doric screen. The portico is flanked by two-storey, single-bay blocks with pitched half-roofs Centre- Elevation of the principal (north) front, showing a five-bay building with acroteria supporting statuary along the roof line. The central three bays form a projecting, one-and-a-half storey Corinthian portico, with a central doorway beyond. This is flanked by single-bay, single-storey blocks, with pitched half-roofs and niches Below- Plan of the ground storey of a five-by-four-bay building with the central three bays of the north and south fronts projecting. The north entrance leads to a central colonnaded hall, flanked by additional rooms and staircases, and with a further circular staircase to the rear

Scale

not to scale

Inscribed

South Front / Principal Front / Principal Story and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • c1760
    datable to c1760

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (162 x 280)

Hand

Probably
Robert Adam

Verso

Rough elevation of a one-and-a-half storey, five-bay building, surmounted by a pediment supported by Corinthian columns, with a central entrance within a relieving arch flanked by niches containing statuary

Literature

For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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).