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  • image Adam vol.55/155
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Reference number

Adam vol.55/155

Purpose

Unfinished capriccio showing two pavilions, one domed with a triumphal arch centrepiece, and the other in outline, linked by a three-bay quadrant with relief panels above two niches containing sculpture. A detail of a quadrant is below.

Aspect

Perspective, detail verso perspective, elevation, plan

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink on drawing 155

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1755 - 56

Medium and dimensions

Black chalk 310 x 204

Hand

Robert Adam

Verso

Academic study in pencil and pen showing a symmetrical pavilion with coffered and apsidal entrance on steps, flanked by segmental headed doors with relief panel above and cupola on top. This composition is one of a series of exercises that can be seen in Adam vol.55/168-171 and is possibly taken directly from 55/51. Also on the sheet is the elevation of the garden façade of Inveraray Castle, Scotland, above an outline plan. William Adam (1689-1748) worked on Inveraray Castle, Scotland between 1745-48 and John Adam (1721-92) did so between 1751-53 (see I. G. Lindsay & M. Cosh, Inveraray and the Dukes of Argyll, Edinburgh, 1973, pp.52-65). The garden or south front was engraved for Vitruvius Scoticus during the second period and the drawing here is probably a copy after that print.

Watermark

partial names

Notes

This chalk scheme is developed further in the red chalk drawing in Adam vol.55/165, attributed to Laurent-Benoít Dewez (1731-1812).

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).