[35] Presentation drawing for approved plan

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [35] Presentation drawing for approved plan

Browse

Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Public buildings
  - London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, Southwark for the Governors of Dulwich College, 1811-1813 (108)
    - Revisions to the approved design, 12 July to 19 October 1811 (14)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM 15/1/2

Purpose

[35] Presentation drawing for approved plan

Aspect

Plan of the Gallery, as if viewed from Gallery Road

Scale

bar scale of 1/6 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Dulwich College, centre line (three times), closet (four times), (pencil) calculations and dimensions given

Signed and dated

Lincolns Inn Fields 19^th July 1811

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, sepia and rose pink washes, pricked for transfer, within a five-ruled pen and sepia and black wash border on wove paper (622 x 964)

Hand

Pupil (George Bailey, George Allen Underwood, George Basevi and John Buxton recorded drawing plans of Dulwich in the Day Book entry for 19 July 1811)

Watermark

J Whatman 1808

Notes

The plans include the arcade running along the east front, agreed at the meeting of 12 July. There are now four narrow entrances for the almshouses, which separate the east front into five sections; the two-storey end bays, the adjacent almhouse bays defined by three windows and the entrance vestibule for the Gallery in the centre. The drawings show the Mausoleum as a cruciform projection.

SM 65/4/62 shows fireplaces in the large Gallery rooms, indicated by niches in the wall, however, this drawing and SM 15/1/1 show only flues embedded in the Gallery walls. In the alternative plans Soane explores different heating options. In 'Heating methods and their impact on Soane's work: Lincoln's Inn Fields and Dulwich Picture Gallery', Journal of Society of Architectural Historians, 52/1, March 1993, pp. 26-58, Todd Willmert writes of Soane's indecisiveness about the heating of the Gallery. It is not known whether the Gallery had fireplaces or not but the central steam system would definitely have been the main source for heating the space. Fireplaces may have been employed to provide additional heat or purely for aesthetic purposes.

Literature

T. Willmert. 'Heating methods and their impact on Soane's work: Lincoln's Inn Fields and Dulwich Picture Gallery', Journal of Society of Architectural Historians, 52/1, March 1993, p. 53
C. Davies, 'Masters of building: the first independent purpose-built picture gallery: Dulwich Picture Gallery', Architect's Journal, April 1984, p. 59
F. Nevola, Soane's favourite subject: the story of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2000, pp. 49 & 182

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).