[5] Finished drawing showing the river front of the bridge, and its surrounding topography, 1770

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Public buildings
  - Pulteney Bridge, Bath, Somerset: executed scheme commissioned by William Pulteney, 1770 (6)
    - Designs and finished drawings for the bridge, 1770, as executed (6)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 51/22

Purpose

[5] Finished drawing showing the river front of the bridge, and its surrounding topography, 1770

Aspect

Elevation of a bridge composed of three equal segmental arches, supported by stepped starlings and pyramid-topped piers, above which are oculi and rectangular windows. On top of the bridge is a single and one-and-a-half-storey, nineteen-bay terrace; with single-bay domed and pedimented pavilions at each end; and with a three-bay central block surmounted by a broken-based pediment, containing a Venetian window within a relieving arch, and flanked by link bays, and bays surmounted by attics with pyramidal roofs. Below the bridge the river and riverbed are given, and to either side can be seen the levels of the land

Scale

bar scale of 7/10 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Bridge for William Pulteney Esqr at Bath (in the hand of William Adam)

Signed and dated

1770
datable to 1770

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and yellow and coloured washes of sepia and cerulean blue within a single ruled border on laid paper (834 x 337)

Hand

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

Watermark

LVG surmounted by fleur de lis within crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 3
Manco, 1995, p. 134
Rowan, 2007, p. 69
For a full list of literature reference see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Vaulting Ambition: The Adam Brothers, Contractors to the Metropolis in the Reign of George III, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 14 September 2007 - 12 January 2008; The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum, Cheltenham, 19 April - 24 May 2008; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 24 October - 13 December 2008

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).