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  • image SM 65/4/42

Reference number

SM 65/4/42

Purpose

[22] Presentation drawing for alternative Design No 6 for a wider H-plan

Aspect

Ground plan

Scale

bar scale of 1/17 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, (pencil) skylight, porch (twice), some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • datable to May 1811

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, sepia and rose pink washes, pricked for transfer, within a nine-ruled pen and sepia and black wash border on laid paper (457 x 581)

Hand

John Buxton (pupil 1809-1814) or Charles Tyrrell (1795-1832, pupil 1811-1816) (only two pupils continually recorded drawing plans in the Day Book entries for May) with pencil additions by Soane

Watermark

A Stace 1798, fleur-de-lis above cartouche with bar and below, AS

Notes

The College authorities rejected Soane's initial five designs because of lack of funds. This sixth design is an 'H' plan design, wider than the 'H' plan of SM 65/4/9 and SM 65/4/10, with the Gallery in the centre connecting the north and south ranges. The Mausoleum is now on the east side of the Gallery and the entrance porch on the west side.

Soane's pencil revisions relocate the Gallery to the west. This rough design adds a staircase in the central projecting entrance porch, indicating a two-storey range.

The south range on the plans within this sub-scheme seems to be part of a phased building development. The College authorities had rejected the quadrangular plan and only wanted a single new range to be built. However the outline of a new range to the south continued to be drawn. Perhaps retaining the possibility of future expansion.

Literature

G. Waterfield, Soane and after: the architecture of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1987, pp. 30; F. Nevola, Soane's favourite subject: the story of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2000, pp. 35 & 178

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).