Inscribed
(recto, pencil, Dance) Decoration of a Piss house
Medium and dimensions
(recto) Brush and sepia wash on laid secretary paper with three fold marks (329 x 202), (verso) brown pen, hatching
Hand
George Dance (1741-1825) (recto & verso)
Watermark
LVG
Notes
Dance's satirical design inscribed 'Piss house' shows a semicircle with five alcoves on the inside face; a small extension at the side has a ? two-holer lavatory. Behind the semcircular wall and in the centre is a plunge bath. The design seems to be for a garden building with alcoves for seats (recalling a monks' rere-dorter) and with a bath-house at the rear.Whether the designs on recto and verso are related is uncertain. The alternative elevations for a domed tower show that it was to be attached to an existing building and its purpose is not obvious. Dance sometimes revealed a rather scatological sense of humour. There is, for example, his design for a 'public Privy' with defecating figures (V&A 3436.11, reproduced, plate 18, A.Rowan, Robert Adam, Catalogue of architectural drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, pp.45-6, catalogue 42). On the verso of this V&A drawing there is a freehand elevation of a dome with swags on the drum that relates to the verso of the Soane Museum drawing catalogued above. Thus both versos are for a circular, domed tower while the rectos are satirical and all are in Dance's hand.
Literature
J.Lever, Catalogue of the drawings of George Dance the Younger (1741-1825) ... from the collection of Sir John Soane's Museum , 2003, pp. 3643-3651 (catalogue [113])
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural,
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