Scale
scale - 1" to 40 ft
Inscribed
Inscribed in ink in a contemporary hand Front towards the River and Plan for The Houses of Lords and Commons; and in pencil is a key to the rooms
Signed and dated
Medium and dimensions
Pen495 x 610
Hand
James Adam Office
Watermark
CM P1.
Notes
In the opinion of A. A. Tait, this drawing relates in time and place or subject to those contained in Adam volume 7.This is the plan to the river elevation in Adam vol.28/2 and like that drawing is a pricked-through copy. It can be related to the Parliament schemes of both James and Robert Adam although it is unlike the plan for the latter in Adam vol.1/29. It is also clear that this scheme incorporated the existing Westminster Hall as well as the recent work at the Court of Requests, and so differs radically from the James Adam schemes of c.1760 that sought total demolition and complete rebuilding. It may well be that his insistence on having plans of the existing buildings sent to him from London in 1760 encouraged a more conservationist approach to his scheme of 1762/63. It is clear too that before Adam's departure from Rome in May 1763 some plan existed: 'on Seeing the Plan, Examining it apparently with much attention; & hearing a Person Say it shewed great Genius, it shews, Says he, what goes far Beyond in a Building, it shews great good Sense' (D. Stillman, English Neo-classical Architecture, 2 vols., London, 1988, I, pp.56-7). The pencil key to the plan seems to have disappeared, if it was ever made.
Level
Drawing
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