Inscribed in ink 1; in red ink 154.

• Undated, probably 1756.

Pencil, pen, watercolour, bodycolour, with oxidised lead white highlighting; ink framing line beyond which is painted red-brown wash.223 x 387

Jean-Baptiste Lallemand

This drawing is one of a set of six Roman views (Adam vol.56/149-154) by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand (1716-1803), all of which have contemporaneous painted borders and have central folds, and most of which are signed. There were several similar sets in the Adam sales of 1818 and 1821 (see Catalogue of A Valuable Collection of Antique Sculpture etc. R. Adam, Christie's, London, 21 & 22 May 1818 and Christie's London Catalogue of the Effects of Robert Adam Esq. Dec. 9 July 1821 & following days). Lot 32 of the second day sale of 1818 was described as 'Six elegant drawings in India ink by L'Alma, of Italian Garden scenery', and lot 29 contained several of Lallemand's landscapes, all of which were bought by John Soane (see Bolton The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 2 vols. (London, 1922), II, p.331). The set was probably made in 1756 for Robert Adam, at the time when he described himself as '... applying myself to these kind of sketches and have already made out a dozen of different views as unlike one another as I could ...' (Fleming Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh & Rome (London, 1962), p.363). A nineteenth-century pencil inscription on the album leaf correctly identifies this as the Ponte Salario. The bridge was later destroyed and rebuilt in 1867. There are views that are probably also by Lallemand and in a similar condition in the Clerk Collection, Scotland (Clerk 63 and 88).

Drawing

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