[93] Progress drawing, July 1812

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
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  - London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, Southwark for the Governors of Dulwich College, 1811-1813 (108)
    - Site progress drawings, May to September 1812 (23)

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Reference number

SM volume 81/12

Purpose

[93] Progress drawing, July 1812

Aspect

Perspective of west front

Signed and dated

July 6 1812

Medium and dimensions

Pencil and coloured washes, watercolour technique, shaded, within a single-ruled black wash border on laid paper (214 x 378)

Hand

George Basevi or Charles Tyrrell (both pupils recorded in the Day Book entry for 6 July 1812)

Watermark

fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche and below, GJ

Notes

The outer shell of the Mausoleum was completed by the beginning of July, while the rest of the west front was still under construction, as can be seen from this drawing dated 6 July. An enlarged version of the drawing was made by a pupil as an illustration for Soane's twelfth Royal Academy lecture from the second series about construction on 12 March 1815 (SM 15/2/10). It is an almost identical view of the west front under construction but drawn in greater detail and shows the Mausoleum lantern with the amber glass fitted. Another similar version of this particular view was also drawn for the lecture but shows an earlier stage of construction with the Mausoleum lantern unbuilt and the Gallery walls incomplete (SM 15/2/08).

Literature

F. Nevola, Soane's favourite subject: the story of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2000, pp. 100 & 192

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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