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  • image Adam vol.55/77
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Reference number

Adam vol.55/77

Purpose

Capriccio showing a partially-ruined interior divided by columns and pilasters opening through arches into further colonnaded halls with thermal windows beneath the remains of a barrel-vaulted ceiling.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 77

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 - 56

Medium and dimensions

Pen177 x 254

Hand

Robert Adam, attributed to

Notes

This composition is part of a group of mostly ink drawings, Adam vol.55/71-77, executed in a deliberately casual style that may have served as the inspiration for more elaborate watercolours by both Robert Adam and Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1721-1820) that can be seen in volume 56, see Adam vol.56/123, and in this volume in Adam vol.55/67. Like 55/73, this drawing is attributed to Adam by Fleming but not discussed (see caption to fig.9 in J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, p.167). However, the relationship between the compositions in this group is complex, as 55/74 makes plain where both hands are apparent, and the general authorship here of Clérisseau cannot be ruled out.

Literature

Rep. J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, London, 1962, fig.9, p.167.

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).