[12] Finished drawing for a ceiling for the front parlour, 1775, executed with minor alterations

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - Home House, Portman Square, number 17 (now 20), London, for the Countess of Home, 1775-78 (73)
      - Finished drawing for a ceiling for the front parlour, 1775, executed with minor alterations (1)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 12/161

Purpose

[12] Finished drawing for a ceiling for the front parlour, 1775, executed with minor alterations

Aspect

Plan of a rectangular ceiling ornamented with a central figurative oval encircled by a band of rosettes and enclosed within a foil. Beyond this there is a curved lozenge formed from bands of calyx which encloses draped figures bearing ribbons. All this is encircled by oval bands of enclosed anthemia, rosettes and festoons, and Vitruvian scroll. The bands are segmented by four figurative tablets surmounted by arabesques supporting urns flanked by winged sphinxes and surmounted by anthemia and wreaths enclosing rosettes. The corners are ornamented with compartments containing half-putti and arabesques. The ceiling is bordered on the short sides by alcoves with a panel ornamented with arabesques, and this is surmounted by an urn enclosed within a wreath flanked by draped, seated figures

Scale

3/5 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Design of a Ceiling for the Front Parlor at Lady Home's / in Portman Square

Signed and dated

1775
Adelphi / 1775

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured washes including cerulean blue on laid paper (596 x 451)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi. This drawing has been produced by more than one draughtsman. The figurative features have been drawn by a different hand to that of the foliate ornamentation.

Watermark

PVL

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 48
Hussey and Oswald, 1934, pp. 13, 26
Whinney, 1969, p. 61
King, 2001, Volume I, p. 288
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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.

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