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  • image Adam vol.56/4
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Reference number

Adam vol.56/4

Purpose

Scotland: Fife: Dunfirmline. View of Dunfermline, showing the Abbey, palace and town in the middle distance, with a single-span bridge and main road; in the foreground are a figure and dog.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in red ink 4

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably between 1746 and 1750.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, grey wash; ink framing line302 x 397

Hand

Robert Adam

Watermark

crowned fleur de lys

Notes

This is a copy by Robert Adam of plate 45 in John Slezer's Theatrum Scotiae (1693), 'The Prospect of ye Town & Abby of Dumfermline'. It is possible that Adam copied it from either the actual drawing in the library at Blair Adam or from the 1718 edition of Slezer's Theatrum Scotiae, which was also in the library. The view shown was taken from the ruins of Malcolm Canmore's tower to the west of the Abbey. Another print in Slezer (plate 46) shows the Abbey from the west at Pittencrieff (see K. Cavers, A Vision of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1993, pp.60-61).

Level

Drawing

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).