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  • image Image 1 for SM volume 66/31, SM volume 66/30, SM volume 62/77
  • image Image 2 for SM volume 66/31, SM volume 66/30, SM volume 62/77
  • image Image 3 for SM volume 66/31, SM volume 66/30, SM volume 62/77
  • image Image 1 for SM volume 66/31, SM volume 66/30, SM volume 62/77
  • image Image 2 for SM volume 66/31, SM volume 66/30, SM volume 62/77
  • image Image 3 for SM volume 66/31, SM volume 66/30, SM volume 62/77

Reference number

SM volume 66/31, SM volume 66/30, SM volume 62/77

Purpose

Record drawings (3)

Aspect

2 Elevation with (Soane, pencil) sketch detail of a bay with a niche replacing a roundel 3 Copy of drawing 1 (plan) 4 Copy of plan and elevation to a reduced scale

Scale

bar scale of 1/6 in to 1 ft; bar scale of 1/8 in to 1 ft; bar scale of 1/12 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

(3) as drawing 1

Signed and dated

  • badly-nested tags: br

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, sepia, green and yellow washes, shaded on laid paper (495 x 700); pencil, pen and light red wash on laid paper (495 x 702); pen, sepia and blue washes on laid paper (365 x 233)

Hand

(2) David Laing (pupil, 1790-6) / Soane; (3) David Laing; (4) Robert Smirke (pupil, 1796-7)

Watermark

(2-3) Edmeades & Pine 1794 (4) IV

Notes

These copies or record drawings of the lost original elevation (and of the plan, to the same scale) were made by David Laing (1774-1856), a pupil in Soane's office (articled 8 January 1790). A further copy was made by Robert Smirke (1780-1867) who, because of a falling out with Soane, was a pupil only from 1796 to 1797. (On Laing and Smirke see H.Colvin, Biographical dictionary of British architects, 1600-1840, 3rd ed. 1995)

The sculptural programme of the elevation amply demonstrates the building's function.

Jill Lever, September 2005

Literature

P. du Prey, John Soane’s architectural education 1753-80, 1977, pp.75-6; P. du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982, pp.57-9; P. du Prey, Sir John Soane, 1985, in series of 'Catalogues of architectural drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum', catalogue 7-8 (further copies)

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).