[4] Preliminary design for overmantel bordered by a strapwork and leatherwork with ribbon-like framing, drops of fruit and flowers and a large central cresting of floral motifs

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English Baroque Drawings: architecture, sculpture and garden design
- Hampton Court Palace
  - Designs for chimney-pieces, room cornices and entablatures, door cases and internal wall elevations, c.1689-1694, mostly by Grinling Gibbons
    - Four related presentation designs for chimney pieces, broadly proportioned, and coloured in similar pink, grey and yellow washes

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Reference number

SM, volume 110/31

Purpose

[4] Preliminary design for overmantel bordered by a strapwork and leatherwork with ribbon-like framing, drops of fruit and flowers and a large central cresting of floral motifs

Aspect

part-elevation

Scale

Not indicated, but about 2 feet to 1 inch

Inscribed

In ink, by George Dance, bottom right, Gd, and by C19 hand, (31)

Signed and dated

Undated, but datable 1689-94

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink with pink, yellow ochre, grey-yellow and grey washes over graphite under-drawing, with some graphite detail and parallel line shading over the wash; on laid paper; top 55 mm has pinkish brown staining and blotching, with some erosion and cracking of paper (455 x 294)

Hand

Gibbons

Watermark

countermark: 'CL'

Notes

This may be a design for the upper part of a corner chimney breast. Locations would include the queen's closets and bedrooms at the south end of the east park front range, and the smaller rooms of the east range, facing the Fountain Court (see Geraghty 2007, Nos 209-211; AS, I.144, I.27 and I.104, where at least eight corner chimney pieces are shown on three study plans datable c. 1689-91). Gibbons has imposed his pen and wash design on a faint pencil sketch for a smaller chimney-piece, with a smaller and lower fire surround. He then concentrated on the overmantel, and in the process carried his cresting over the area originally intended for the cornice of the chimney-piece. The elaborate framing motif probably has a source in the engravings of Jean Marot or Pierre Lepautre. It consists of several linked panels of simulated leather relief, marked with stippled, fish-scale and ruled line texturing, and framed by scalloped, scrolled and intertwined ribbons, forming overlapping planes, and bordered by drops and sprays of fruit and flowers.

Literature

Wren Society, IV, pl. 28, top

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

The Genius of Grinling Gibbons: from Journeyman to Kings Carver, Fairfax House, York, 14 April - 14 September 2018

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