[29] Presentation drawing (relating to the final design) for the monument set in an imaginary landscape, 1816

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Monuments and mausolea
  - London: St Giles in the Fields burial ground (now St Pancras Gardens), Camden: Soane monument [the 'Soane Tomb'], 1816, 1828 (47)

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Reference number

SM 14/4/9

Purpose

[29] Presentation drawing (relating to the final design) for the monument set in an imaginary landscape, 1816

Aspect

Bird's eye view from the south-west that includes a revised design for the gateway, now with a pediment with two angels reclining against a cinerary urn and holding snuffed-out torches. The sky is blue with fluffy white clouds and, in the right middle-ground, is a glimpse of the monument to Jean-Jacques Rousseau at Ermonville.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, green, raw umber, warm sepia, sepia, yellow and blue washes, black ink wash, within black washed border on thick wove paper (710 x 1031)

Hand

George Basevi (1794-1845, pupil 1810-16)

Notes

In four drawings (this one and SM 63/7/34, SM 63/7/35, and SM 14/4/10), Basevi was making drawings for the monument from 14 February to 23 May. The finished perspective catalogued here would have been made between 4 March and 5 April when many references under Basevi's name appear in the Day Book to 'Birds eye views of Monument' including (26 March) 'Finished birds eye of Mr Soane's Monument' and 5 April 'About drawing of Monument, sent afterwards to the Exhibition'.

Drawings SM 63/7/34 and SM 63/7/35 share the same muddy tones, this drawing is the best of the four perspectives and may have additions (black ink wash trees, left-hand side) by J.M. Gandy. Basevi must have benefited from observing Gandy at work and his perspectives show an increasing confidence.

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.

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