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  • image SM Adam volume 32/11
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 32/11

Purpose

[2] Finished drawing for a screen at the west end of the Royal Terrace, c1768-69, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a screen wall, with a central two-storey, three-bay compartment, with a rectangular figurative relief across the ground storey, surmounted by a balustrade lotus capital colonnade, surmounted by a lintel which carries the frieze of festoons which runs the full length of the building, and this central compartment is flanked by two-and-a-half-storey, three-bay walls, articulated by lotus capital pilasters on the first storey. The left-hand wall has a rectangular figurative relief across the ground storey, surmounted by a balustraded apse, with a coffered semi-dome, and flanked by sculpture-filled niches, surmounted by square relief panels, and with grisaille and trophy panels in the upper register. The right-hand wall has two doors on the ground storey, flanked by small rectangular figurative relief panels, surmounted by two storeys of two windows within a relieving arch, and accompanied by a ruinous effect to the surface of the wall, and flanked by sculpture-filled niches, surmounted by square relief panels, and with attic windows above, surmounted by grisaille and trophy panels in the upper register

Scale

bar scale of 1/5 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

No 1 (in pencil) / Design of a Skreen for the West end of the Terrace Adelphi (in the hand of William Adam) (verso) Sketchs of Blank Wall / Adelphi

Signed and dated

  • c1768-69
    datable to c1768-69

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash within a single ruled border on laid paper (655 x 393)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly William Hamilton or Joseph Bonomi, with title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Watermark

WHATMAN

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 33
Rowan, 1974, p. 675
King, 2001, Volume II, pp. 69, 77
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).