[27] Presentation drawing (relating to the final design) for the monument set in an imaginary landscape, 1816

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Monuments and mausolea
  - London: St Giles in the Fields burial ground (now St Pancras Gardens), Camden: Soane monument [the 'Soane Tomb'], 1816, 1828 (47)

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Reference number

SM 63/7/34

Purpose

[27] Presentation drawing (relating to the final design) for the monument set in an imaginary landscape, 1816

Aspect

Bird's eye view from the south-west with the gateway still shown. Set in a gentle, wooded landscape with an overcast sky the drawing is not quite finished, for example, the wavy incised line is missing from the segmental pediments of the four-sided aedicule and the serpent from the drum-like terminal of the dome; there are (pencil) alterations to the acroteria

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, green, raw umber, warm sepia and grey washes, shaded, watercolour technique within ruled and black wash border on wove paper (610 x 842, 620 x 856)

Hand

George Basevi (1794-1845, pupil 1810-16)

Watermark

James Whatman Turkey Mill Kent 1809

Notes

In four drawings (this one and SM 63/7/35, SM 14/4/9 and SM 14/4/10), Basevi was making drawings for the monument from 14 February to 23 May. The finished perspective catalogued here would have been made between 4 March and 5 April when many references under Basevi's name appear in the Day Book to 'Birds eye views of Monument' including (26 March) 'Finished birds eye of Mr Soane's Monument' and 5 April 'About drawing of Monument, sent afterwards to the Exhibition'.

This drawing and SM 63/7/35 share the same muddy tones, drawing SM 14/4/9 is the best of the four perspectives and may have additions (black ink wash trees, left-hand side) by J.M. Gandy. Basevi must have benefited from observing Gandy at work and his perspectives show an increasing confidence.

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).