This is a past event
'Architectural drawings in context: the collection of Robert and James Adam' with Dr Frances Sands (Sir John Soane's Museum, London)
Robert and James Adam were the leading British architects during the second half of the eighteenth century. Each undertook an extensive Grand Tour, and then settled in London rather than their native Edinburgh. Working in the newly fashionable neoclassical style, and with a genius for the manipulation of space, the use of bright colours and ornamental plasterwork rinceau, the brothers quickly became the most fashionable and influential architects of their generation. Between 1759 and 1794, their architectural office made designs for over 500 different projects (including a couple in Aberdeen), producing reams of drawings for each scheme. Alas their success was marred by one significant failure, that of the Adelphi in London, a speculative town planning project which coincided with the national economic downturn of 1772, and which left the Adam family with major debts. As such, following Robert and James’s deaths, the family sold their collections between 1818 and 1833. Notable among these sales were the brothers’ Grand Tour collection, and their office drawings. The majority of these objects were purchased by the London-based collector, Sir John Soane, who after a long and distinguished career as an architect and teacher, left his home and collection of 50,000 items to the British nation. Within the Soane Museum can be seen a variety of antiquities which had once belonged to the Adam brothers, as well as magnificent volumes of Italian Renaissance drawings which they had purchased on the Grand Tour. But perhaps most importantly, the Soane Museum holds the 9,000-strong Adam drawings collection – over 80% of the surviving Adam drawings in the world. As the provenance of the Soane Museum’s Adam drawings collection is the Adam brothers’ own architectural office – rather than being drawings which had been sent to their various clients – it encompasses a vast selection of architectural and interior decorative schemes, both executed and unexecuted, exploring a far wider variety of the Adam brothers’ work than can be perused among their surviving executed buildings. For nearly 200 years the Adam drawings have lain, largely undisturbed, at the Soane Museum. Therefore, the majority are in excellent condition, and they remain the single most important source for the study of Robert and James Adam.
Frances Sands is the Curator of Drawings and Books at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, where she has worked since 2010. She is responsible for Soane’s collection of 30,000 drawings and 7,000 books, as well as the Museum’s research library and drawings cataloguing projects. Her research interests lie in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British architectural drawings. She has written various exhibitions and publishes and lectures widely. Since 2010, Fran has also served as a Trustee of the York Georgian Society, the Mausolea and Monuments Trust, and the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. She is currently the Editor of the Mausolea and Monuments Trust Gazetteer, and sits on the advisory committee for the Grinling Gibbons Society’s Tercentenary exhibition.
This event will held online via MS Teams. Please email Karl Kinsella, karl.kinsella@abdn.ac.uk if you would like to attend, and the link will be forwarded to you.