[19] Finished drawing for the ceiling for the library, 1775, as executed

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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 the ceiling for the library, 1775, as executed (1)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 12/163

Purpose

[19] Finished drawing for the ceiling for the library, 1775, as executed

Aspect

Plan of a square ceiling with a central medallion enclosed within a fan and a band of Vitruvian scroll. Beyond this there are twelve bust medallions encircled by text and set within compartments bordered by guilloche. All this is encircled by a band of husks. Beyond this there are four figurative panels flanked by further panels depicting draped figures. The corners are ornamented with quarter-paterae enclosed within a band of guilloche and a fan ornamented with anthemia. Beyond this there is a band of husks and this is surmounted by rosettes encircled by a further band of husks

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Design of a Cieling for the Library at Lady Home's / in Portman Square

Signed and dated

April 1775
Adelphi / 7t April 1775

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured washes including terre verte and olive green on laid paper (496 x 428)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi

Notes

Harris compares this design to one for a ceiling for the Home House library by Wyatt, in the Penrose-Wyatt collection at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin. The ceiling was executed by Wyatt but then received alterations and embellisments by Adam.

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 48
Hussey and Oswald, 1934, p. 26
Whinney, 1969, pp. 42, 62
Harris, 1997, p. 321
King, 2001, Volume I, p. 289
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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