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  • image Adam vol.56/24
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Reference number

Adam vol.56/24

Purpose

England: Channel Islands: Jersey: Elizabeth Castle. Unfinished view of Elizabeth Castle with figures in front of the small battlemented fort set on a rocky outcrop, with the sea and hills in the distance.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in pencil in a later hand Elizabeth Castle. Jersey.; in red ink 24

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably between 1745 and 1750.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, grey wash on brown washed paper; pencil framing line202 x 450

Hand

Robert Adam

Notes

This drawing by Robert Adam is probably based on a print of Elizabeth Castle, since he had no association with Jersey either early or late in his architectural career. Views of the castle were made by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1659 and by J Bastide c.1731 (see N V L Rybot The Islet of St Helier and Elizabeth Castle (St Helier, 1935), figs.21 and 49). However, it is clear from the Adam sale catalogues, particularly that of 1818 (see Catalogue of A Valuable Collection of Antique Sculpture etc. R. Adam, Christie's, London, 21 & 22 May 1818), that Adam had a considerable collection of British topographical prints, described as a 'large parcel' (see Bolton The Architecture of Robert and James Adam (London, 1922), vol.II, p.329-333), and this drawing may be after one of them.

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).