[7] Preliminary design for a bridge, 1758-70, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Country houses
  - Fonthill Splendens, Tisbury, Wiltshire: unexecuted designs for the house, interior decoration, and a bridge for Alderman William Beckford, date range: 1758-70 (9)
    - Alternative preliminary design and designs for a bridge, 1758-70, unexecuted (4)

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Reference number

Adam volume 2/183

Purpose

[7] Preliminary design for a bridge, 1758-70, unexecuted

Aspect

Rough perspective of a bridge, set within a landscape, composed of three rusticated, semicircular arches, with roundels in the spandrels, and surmounted by a balustrade, and supported by four piers, one of which contains a sculpture-filled niche, and the piers are surmounted by sculptures, the far left-hand pier having a sphinx, and the two inner piers having reclining figures of Bacchus, and with an abutment terminating in a pedestal supporting an urn or a lantern

Scale

not to scale

Inscribed

As the Mahogany for the Book / Room is very forward, Ld Coventry / wishes Mr Adams woud settle / how the Space above the / Chimney is to be disposd / Q. Whether any thing more / than a Picture in a handsome / frame will be advisable!

Signed and dated

1758-1770
Date range: 1758-70

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (380 x 311)

Hand

Robert Adam

Verso

Rough preliminary elevation of Adam volume 51/12, drawn in pencil, but with sphinxes instead of Bacchic sculptures, Chancellor (in pencil) / Lord Chancellor (in pen)

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).