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  • image SM Adam volume 28/47
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 28/47

Purpose

[6] Finished drawing showing an axial section though the building, c1765-68, unexecuted

Aspect

Central axial section through the building as shown in the plan (Adam volume 28/49), with a convex colonnade of fluted Corinthian columns on the left-hand side, behind which are pedimented doors alternating with sculpture-filled niches, and inside is a hall with a coved ceiling, surmounted by a room on the first storey containing a screen of Ionic columns, and beyond these rooms, on the right-hand side of the section, is the two-storey rotunda, with a domed ceiling ornamented with octagonal coffering, above an entablature ornamented with dentils, ox skulls and swags, and with a central door, flanked by engaged Corinthian columns supporting a pediment, and surmounted by a rectangular relief overdoor panel, and the door is flanked by rectangular sculpture-filled recesses, which are above rectangular panels containing swags, and beyond are apses with coffered semi-domes, and containing urn-filled niches, and beyond the rotunda on the far right-hand side of the section is a single-storey, single-bay room containing a door, surmounted by an overdoor panel ornamented with a naturalistic anthemion

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Section through the Ball & Concert Rooms at Bath (in the hand of William Adam)

Signed and dated

  • 1765-68
    date range: c1765-68 (see scheme notes)

Medium and dimensions

Pen, wash and yellow wash within a double ruled border on laid paper (1251 x 558)

Hand

Adam office hand, with title inscription in the hand of William Adam. For the finished drawings made for the Adam brothers’ unexecuted Bath Assembly Rooms scheme, it is difficult to assign a specific draughtsman’s hand as the date is not exact; they are drawn in the Adam office in-house style, and the author could be any one of around seven or eight draughtsmen including Robert Nasmith, Giuseppe Sacco, William Hamilton, J.P. Laurent or Joseph Bonomi.

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 3
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 53
Rowan, 2003, p. 27
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

'Bob the Roman': Heroic Antiquity and the Architecture of Robert Adam, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 27 June - 27 September 2003; New York School of Interior Design Gallery, 29 September - 4 December 2004

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).