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Design for a Gothic tower, consisting of a circular, central tower with battlements and turrets, enclosed in a wider square tower with round corner towers and battlements with windows and tracery doorways. It is approached by steps.
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Reference number
Adam vol.54/Series 4/1
Purpose
Design for a Gothic tower, consisting of a circular, central tower with battlements and turrets, enclosed in a wider square tower with round corner towers and battlements with windows and tracery doorways. It is approached by steps.
Aspect
Perspectiveverso perspective, plan, details
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink 1; and in pencil in a later hand on the album leaf, Gothick Sketchesverso inscribed in ink 1; in pencil in a nineteenth-century hand, presumably by compiler of the volume, Gothick Sketches
Signed and dated
- Undated, probably 1757
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, pen, brown wash333 x 210
Hand
Robert Adam
Verso
Capriccio in pencil and pen showing a circular tower of three stories on basement with steps in a landscape setting. To one side is a circular plan with columns and spiral staircase; and above are details of stairs and a column capital and architrave.
Watermark
figure in circle
Notes
The tower may be compared with the elevation in Adam vol.54/Series 4/4 and with the more fanciful composition in volume 55, Adam vol.55/24. There are several plans and elevations for towers in Adam vol.54/Series 7/92; it may also be related to various exercises on the triangular plan in volume 55 and to that in Adam vol.54/Series 7/163. In 1757 Robert Adam also admired the Gothic tower of St.-Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, The Netherlands as magnificent and having 'nobility' (National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh, Clerk of Penicuik Collection, GD18/4845). All such compositions may be seen as the source of Adam's tower repertoire that starts with the proposed tower for Kedleston, Derby in 1761 and evolves to the Brislee Tower, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland of 1777. This sheet was possibly wrongly mounted in the nineteenth century and the verso with its inscription Gothic Sketches should have been the recto.
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