[38] Design for the great drawing room, 1779, as executed

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - Hill Street, number 31 (later 17), London, designs for a rear elevation, interiors and furniture, for Sir Abraham Hume, 1778-1780 (64)
      - Design for the great drawing room, 1779, as executed (1)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 50/25

Purpose

[38] Design for the great drawing room, 1779, as executed

Aspect

Plan and laid-out wall-elevations of the great drawing room. The plan is of a room with apsidal ends, with a preliminary design (pencil) for a border of a ceiling or carpet. One wall-elevation contains four full-height windows surmounted by cornices, which are to the first design in Adam volume 52/78. Between the windows there are a pair of pier tables with turned feet, a bottom rail ornamented with fluting surmounted by an urn, a frieze of rosettes with a central tablet, and an apron of swags. These are surmounted by pier glass frames supporting socles which bear figurative roundels and draped figures with festoons, all surmounted by an urn. The third pier contains a preliminary design (pencil) for a girandole(?). Above, there is a frieze ornamented with pedestals bearing urns, alternating with rosettes and festoons, a further frieze (as Adam volume 53/39), and a band of dentils. The opposite wall-elevation contains a central chimneypiece with caryatid stiles, capitals containing rosettes, and a frieze with a central tablet depicting a figurative scene. This is surmounted by a tripartite mirror frame, with stiles formed from paired fluted columns, and a frieze of laurel leaf tips surmounted by a band of dentils. The frame's central compartment is formed with a semi-circular band forming an upper compartment ornamented with a rosette, and flanked by draped figures with festoons. Above this there is a socle supporting a two-branch candelabrum, flanked by swans. The chimneypiece is flanked by pilasters ornamented as Adam volume 49/6, with minor alterations, and stylised Ionic capitals ornamented with half-figures and arabesques. Beyond this there are relieving arches containing oval mirror frames, surmounted by tubular flowers, calyx and anthemia, flanked by draped figures bearing festoons. The frame has an apron consisting of a tablet ornamented with anthemia and semi-circular bands of beading, and surmounted by swans. One curved wall-elevation contains a mirror frame to the same designs as the overmantel mirror frame, with alterations. This is flanked by further pilasters and doors which are ornamented with painted panels, possibly as Adam volumes 24/78-79. The doorways are surmounted by cornices with a frieze of enclosed anthemia, and with overdoors containing painted scenes

Scale

to a scale of 3/8 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Room for Sir Abraham Hume and some dimensions given / (and in the hand of A.T. Bolton?, pencil) The Drawing Room 17 Hill Street

Signed and dated

Jan 1779
Adelphi / Janry 1779

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured washes including pink, Indian yellow, cerulean blue and verdigris within a single ruled border on laid paper (808 x 647)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi or Robert Morison

Verso

Sir Abraham Hume Sections of Rooms / 4 / Sir Abraham Hume / Section & front in Hill Street / 4 / (and in modern curatorial hand, pencil) Adam Volume 50 drawing 25 / Vol 50 70

Literature

King, 2001, Volume I, p. 304
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Original Drawings of Robert and James Adam, Kenwood House, London, 1953

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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