Inscribed
Inscribed in ink 86; in red ink on backing sheet 53
Signed and dated
- Undated, probably c.1756.
Medium and dimensions
Pencil and pen; grey wash on grey washed paper265 x 423, mounted on backing sheet 318 x 429
Hand
Robert Adam
Verso
On the verso of the backing sheet are the remains of corners of a drawing on grey paper (see also Adam vol.56/50).
Notes
The drawings in Adam vol.56/49-54 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 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 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), pp.20-23).The circular building in this drawing can be compared to that in the small landscape sketch on the verso of Adam vol.55/51.
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
Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural,
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it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance
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