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  • image Adam vol.26/55
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Reference number

Adam vol.26/55

Purpose

Record drawing of the front panel of a sarchophagus showing in relief a circular portrait of a man supported by two sea gods and female figures. Alongside these are two putti, one with a horn and the other with a lyre, and two seated female figures each with a child on her lap.

Aspect

Elevation

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink in a contemporary hand Ex Museo J.A.

Signed and dated

  • Undated

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, black chalk, black wash with white heightening on grey paper 150 x 553

Hand

Unidentified eighteenth-century hand

Notes

This panel has been identified as that described in lot 20 of the Adam sale of 1773 as 'An urn or Sarcophagus with marine figures in bas-relief, 4ft.10 ins by 1ft.2ins' (see A. A. Tait, Robert Adam: drawings and imagination, Cambridge, 1993, p.83). It was acquired for 12 guineas by 'Rose', who bought other lots of a decorative nature and may have been Robert Adam's principal plasterer Joseph Rose (see D. Stillman, The Decorative Work of Robert Adam, London, 1966, p.47-8). However, it does not match any of the sources given in James Adam's 1762 list of 'Good Antiquitys' (National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh, Clerk of Penicuik Collection, GD18/4954), and may well have been acquired from a dealer. The draughtsmanship, especially in the use of chalk and wash, is unusual in this volume and is of a high quality.

Literature

Repr. A. A. Tait, Robert Adam: drawings and imagination, Cambridge, 1993, p.84, fig.66.

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).