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  • image Adam vol.55/60
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Reference number

Adam vol.55/60

Purpose

France: Nímes, Tour Magne. Study showing the ruined tower.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in contemporary hand, probably that of Robert Adam, Sketch of Tour Magne at Nimes from the/ Wind Mill. Taken on the/ Spot. 13. Decem. 1754; and in ink on drawing 60;

Signed and dated

  • 13 December 1754

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen181 x 117

Hand

Robert Adam

Verso

Unfinished view in pencil of the Pont du Guard, near Nímes from below.

Watermark

horned crown

Notes

The two drawings (recto and verso) of the antiquities around Nímes in France were made around the same time in December 1754, as was Robert Adam's study of the antique pavement in Adam vol.8/55 (see J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.116). Adam's letter of 5 December relates that 'We proceeded to Avignon by way of Bagnol, to which place I fancy we must return in order to get upon the post road to Pont du Guard (another Antiquity) & to Nimes where we will remain 2 or 3 days' (National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh, Clerk of Penicuik Collection, GD18/4751). The untrimmed drawing is a complete page taken from a small notebook and shows the marks of the string gatherings and rounded corners. Similar pages are found in Adam vol.57/81-83.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

'Bob the Roman': Heroic Antiquity and the Architecture of Robert Adam, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 27 June - 27 September 2003; New York School of Interior Design Gallery, 29 September - 4 December 2004
The Adam Brothers in Rome: Drawings from the Grand Tour, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 25 September 2008 - 14 February 2009

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).