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  • image Adam vol.55/24
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Reference number

Adam vol.55/24

Purpose

Capriccio showing an elevation of a circular Gothic tower on steps and arcade with quatrefoil and gable decoration above, with battlements and turrets, and a brazier or cupola on top.

Aspect

Elevation

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 24

Signed and dated

  • Undated, possibly 1757

Medium and dimensions

Pen, brown wash 154 x 53

Notes

The Gothic style of this composition may be compared with Adam vol.55/20 and the drawings in the Gothic section of Adam volume 54, particularly Adam vol.54/Series 4/9. According to Fleming, the design can be dated to 1757 (see Fleming, op.cit., 1962, caption to pl.75; see also Adam vol.55/4 and 13). The invention here is the Gothic counterpart of the classical composition in Adam vol.55/150.
In terms of the development of the Adam style, this drawing can be seen as a source for the Brislee Tower, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland, of 1778.

Literature

Rep. J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, pl.75.

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).