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Reference number

Adam vol.56/2

Purpose

Scotland: Edinburgh: Greyfriars' Churchyard, Adam Mausoleum. Perspective of the small single-bay Adam mausoleum in Greyfriars' Churchyard, Edinburgh. On the left is a small tree and in the background are the towers of Heriot's Hospital and beyond is Edinburgh Castle.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed on album leaf in red ink 2; lettered and dated on drawing, bottom left: Robt Adam Delint/1753

Signed and dated

  • 1753

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, grey wash; ink framing line 473 x 378 (trimmed)

Hand

Robert Adam

Watermark

IHS/ Villandry

Notes

The Adam mausoleum in Greyfriars' Churchyard was designed by Robert and John Adam in 1753 to incorporate the tomb of their father, William Adam, who died in 1748. It was completed in October 1755. There is a later drawing of the tomb c.1824 at Blair Adam (BA 671). A design in pencil by Robert Adam for a much larger, three-storied Adam mausoleum, presumably made in the early 1750s, is in the Blair Adam collection (BA 201), inscribed 'The Adamian Sepulchure near/ The Haddingtonian'. A more fanciful scheme can be found in Adam vol.55/37-38.

Literature

Rep. J. Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome, John Murray, London, 1962; repr. 1978, pl.40; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert and James Adam London, 1991, p.360.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

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).