[98] 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
- Public buildings
  - 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 81/22

Purpose

[98] Progress drawing, July 1812

Aspect

Interior perspective of Gallery

Signed and dated

datable to mid 1812

Medium and dimensions

Pencil and coloured washes, watercolour technique, shaded on laid paper (199 x 222)

Hand

Soane office

Watermark

1809

Notes

In this drawing the vaulted ceiling has now been plastered. This would have been completed by either William Rothwell or J. and J. Bayley. The drawing reveals the duct that would receive the steam pipes for the under-floor heating system under construction. In the background it seems that perhaps a fireplace opening is being built in the Gallery wall, located as it appears in the plans of SM 65/4/21, SM 65/4/31, SM 65/4/59 and SM 65/4/49. Once the exterior building work was completed in September 1812, Messrs Bolton and Watts' steam-heating system was installed at a cost of £270. As a result the floor of the Gallery was not laid until early 1813. The heating system was not a success and led to the pipes leaking, causing dry rot. The information about the tradesmen is from the building accounts, SM Bill Book G, folios 413-442.

Early designs show pendentive domes supporting glazed lanterns over the gallery spaces (see SM 65/4/17 and SM 65/4/14). However, this drawing reveals that flat angled ceilings were actually built beneath the lanterns. Blank lunettes were built into the ceiling to give more interest. The lantern skylights of the Gallery are also complete at this stage. The smith, Thomas Rysell is recorded as doing the 'ironwork for Lanthorn lights' on 20 July, fixed by 3 men on 30 July. Lanthorn is an archaic word for lantern. He was paid a total of £49.18.2. The information about the tradesmen is from the building accounts, SM Bill Book G, folios 413-442.

Literature

T. Willmert. 'Heating methods and their impact on Soane's work: Lincoln's Inn Fields and Dulwich Picture Gallery', Journal of Society of Architectural Historians, 52/1, March 1993, p. 54
C. Davies, 'Masters of building: the first independent purpose-built picture gallery: Dulwich Picture Gallery', Architect's Journal, April 1984, pp. 54-55
F. Nevola, Soane's favourite subject: the story of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2000, pp. 104 & 192

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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