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  • image SM Adam volume 28/48
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 28/48

Purpose

[13] Finished drawing showing a longitudinal section through the building, c1765-68, unexecuted

Aspect

Longitudinal section through the building as shown in the plan (Adam volume 28/49), with a central hall with a coved ceiling, a central door surmounted by a segmental pediment, and flanked by sculpture-filled niches, and on the storey above is another room, with a central pedimented door, flanked by alternating urn-filled niches and urn-filled rectangular recesses, and with apsidal ends screened from the room by Ionic columns, and the central rooms are flanked by the ball room to the left, and the concert hall to the right. The ball room is double height, with a coved ceiling, and a central arched recess at the far end, screened by Ionic columns, and containing a chimneypiece, and the recess is flanked by figures in the spandrels, and by bays articulated by fluted Corinthian pilasters, between which are sculpture-filled niches, surmounted by rectangular relief panels, and the central part of the room is flanked by lower recesses to either side, which are screened by fluted Corinthian columns, and contain apses with coffered semi-domes, and which are screened by Ionic columns, and surmounted by rectangular relief panels. The concert hall has a large apse at the far end, flanked by figures in the spandrels, and with a compartmental semi dome, ornamented with octagonal, rectangular and circular tablets, and compartments of arabesques, and with a central arched recess, flanked by rectangular relief panels, and beyond are doors, surmounted by rectangular compartments containing rosettes and swags, and with steps and balustrading along the front of the apse, and the concert hall is flanked by lower domed rooms, each containing a door, surmounted by a rectangular overdoor panel, and flanked by niches

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Section through the Ball and Court Room 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 pink and yellow washes within a double ruled border on laid paper (1704 x 555)

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
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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).