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  • image SM 37/2/9

Reference number

SM 37/2/9

Purpose

[15] Alternative designs for elevations including entrance elevation, May 1793

Aspect

No 3, Design for Entrances into the Officer's Apartments &c having two doors with segmental heads either side of a truncated pediment crowned by a cannon ball pyramid

Scale

bar scale of 1/7 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above and St James's Palace

Signed and dated

  • May 1793
    (Soane's signature) John Soane Archt / (another hand) May 1793

Medium and dimensions

Pen, warm sepia, sepia, burnt umber and blue washes, shaded with quintuple ruled and burnt umber wash border on laid paper (263 x 432)

Hand

Soane Office, draughtsman
Soane office

Watermark

fleur-de-lis above cartouche with bar and below, GR

Notes

Of Soane's alternative designs (drawings [9]-[10]) the semi-elliptical plan was chosen. The wall elevations [11]-[12] were plain with windows raised about six feet above the ground and with simple pilasters. Ornament was kept to what could be done with cannon balls. For the 'Entrances into the Officers Apartments', it is assumed that the location is (drawing [8]) on the righthand side and marked 'H' and 'Entrance for the Officers'. Soane offered a choice of ornament of which drawing [14] (design 'No. 2') with its striking proportions and Vanbrugh-like detail is the best. However, a simpler and more economical design (drawing [16]) was apparently built. (JL)

Level

Drawing

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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.

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