Inscribed in ink on drawing 83; in red ink on backing sheet 49

• Undated, probably c.1756.

Pencil and pen; grey wash on grey washed paper272 x 387, mounted on backing sheet 332 x 432

Robert Adam

This drawing and the following drawings in volume 56, Adam vol.56/50-54, are part of a set of landscape compositions by Robert Adam. They are all of a similar size, on grey washed paper and in the style of Jean-Baptiste Lallemand (1716-1803), but the sources of the compositions may differ. It is likely that these drawings were part of a larger group since each has a number between 83 and 94, inscribed in the eighteenth century. They were probably made in Rome in c.1756; Robert Adam wrote in November of that year that he had been working on such 'kind of ... sketches...' and had '... already made out a dozen different views as unlike one another as I could ...' (Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (London, 1962), p.363). This drawing is different from others in the set in that it shows a less idealised landscape, with domestic building and mountainous setting. His source may have been a print rather than a Lallemand composition. Lettered on a tablet above the grotto entrance in Robert Adam's hand Parnassus.This set of drawings may be compared with the landscape compositions in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (for example 1954-14) (see Tait Robert Adam: drawings and imagination (Cambridge, 1993), p.23).

Drawing

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