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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  England: Surrey: Richmond Gardens. Three studies for Queen Caroline's Hermitage in Richmond Gardens showing, top: section of interior with a table in a shell-decorated niche with a daybed on either side; centre: elevation of rustic work in three bays with gated central entrance, covered in vegetation; bottom: plan.
  • image Adam vol.56/33-35
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Reference number

Adam vol.56/33-35

Purpose

England: Surrey: Richmond Gardens. Three studies for Queen Caroline's Hermitage in Richmond Gardens showing, top: section of interior with a table in a shell-decorated niche with a daybed on either side; centre: elevation of rustic work in three bays with gated central entrance, covered in vegetation; bottom: plan.

Aspect

Studies: section, plan and elevation

Scale

Scale for section (56/33): 1 5/8 ins to 10 ft

Inscribed

Inscribed on both album leaf and drawing in red ink 33, 34, 35

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1730

Medium and dimensions

Pen, grey and brown washes436 x 301

Hand

William Kent

Watermark

fleur de lys and shield; countermarks

Notes

These studies are probably the first or preliminary design by William Kent for Queen Caroline's Hermitage at Richmond Gardens. They can be compared with the drawing of Kent's revised design in Adam vol.56/25. This drawing is closer to Kent's print of 1738, inscribed 'View of the Hermitage. in the Royal Garden at Richmond', in the rustic quality of the architecture. According to Fleming, Robert Adam visited Richmond Gardens in 1750 and '... took a plan of the Queen's hermitage by Morris ...' (Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (London, 1962), p.85). The reference to 'Morris' is probably to Roger (d.1749) rather than Robert Morris, who Adam knew through his work at Inveraray Castle, Argyll, Scotland. It is likely that Robert Adam acquired both this drawing and Adam vol.56/25 at that time. Alternatively he may have acquired the two drawings when he became Royal Architect in 1761 and had access to the drawings for royal buildings.

Literature

Rep. Dixon Hunt William Kent, Landscape Garden Designer (London, 1987), pl.71William Kent 1685-1748, A Poet on Paper (London, 1998), catalogue of an exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 1998, cat.28C M Sicca 'Like a shallow cave by nature made, William Kent's natural architecture at Richmond', Architectura (Munich, 1986), vol.16, pp.68-82, fig.5.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

William Kent 1685-1748: A Poet on Paper, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 30 October - 19 December 1998
A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits and Solitude in Art, The Holburne Museum, Bath, 16 April - 2 June 2002
William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York, 19 September 2013 - 16 February 2014; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 22 March - 13 July 2014

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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