Record drawings, September 1796 (2)

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The drawings from the office of Sir John Soane
- Soane's architectural education: Royal Academy and Italy including measured drawings: 1770-1780
  - Soane's architectural education including theoretical designs made for the Royal Academy Schools and for exhibition at the Royal Academy, 1770-80, and in Italy, 1778-80
    - Copies of a design for an unidentified mausoleum on an X-plan, 1779-1780, with perspective by J.M.Gandy of a variant design, 1798-1800 (6)

image Image 1 for SM volume 62/78, volume 62/79

image Image 2 for SM volume 62/78, volume 62/79

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Reference number

SM volume 62/78, volume 62/79

Purpose

Record drawings, September 1796 (2)

Aspect

3-4 Plan and elevation

Scale

to a scale (smaller than drawings 1-2)

Inscribed

4 (Soane) Design for a Mausoleum / The principal Front

Signed and dated

(3) (pencil) Seward and Sep^t22^d 1796 (4) (pencil) Smirke and Sept^r20th 1796

Medium and dimensions

Pen, light red wash, pencil; pen, sepia washes, pencil, shaded on laid paper (368 x 232, 232 x 368)

Hand

Henry Seward (pupil, from May 1794), Robert Smirke (1796-7)

Watermark

3 fleur-de-lis

Notes

While the plan is the same as the one shown on drawing 1, the elevation has a few additions to that of drawing 2. It is now furnished with four alcoves, four niches, eight tablets and four small cinerary urns as well as the pedestals supporting trophies also shown on drawing 2. Presumably Smirke did this at Soane's direction - both plans indicate two alcoves on this front.
Henry Hake Seward (1778-1848) was articled to Soane in May 1794, remained in Soane's office after his articles had expired and left in 1808. Robert Smirke (1780-1867) entered Soane's office in May 1796 but left after a few months 'owing to a mutual antipathy between master and pupil' (H.Colvin, Biographical dictionary of British architects 1600-1840, 3rd ed., 1995).
Margaret Richardson (note, February 2008) comments that drawing 3 seems to be in the same hand as drawing 1, and drawing 4 in the same hand as drawing 2 - hence the attributions of 1 and 2.

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.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).