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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [4] Sketch design for alternative chimney-pieces, left and right, with tall mid-height picture frames, chamfer-cornered on left and square on right, the left one bordered by a caryatid console and the right one by a foliage drop, and the overmantel with a single martial composition of putti, shields and arms
  • image SM, volume 110/42

Reference number

SM, volume 110/42

Purpose

[4] Sketch design for alternative chimney-pieces, left and right, with tall mid-height picture frames, chamfer-cornered on left and square on right, the left one bordered by a caryatid console and the right one by a foliage drop, and the overmantel with a single martial composition of putti, shields and arms

Aspect

Elevation of two alternative schemes

Scale

Not indicated, but about 1 foot to 1 inch

Inscribed

In ink by George Dance at bottom right, Gd, and to right by a C19 hand, (41[)]

Signed and dated

  • Undated, but probably dating 1689-94

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink over graphite under-drawing, with greenish brown wash; on smooth white laid paper, with pinkish brown staining in top 45 mm of sheet; 370 x 234

Hand

Gibbons

Watermark

Strasbourg Lily/4WR/AJ

Notes

The trophy is similar to that on 110/26 (section 6/4, no. 2). The design may be preparatory for this grander chimney piece design, or could have been derived from it. The most obvious difference between the two designs is the absence in this drawing of any architectural or sculptural framing around the hearth.

Literature

D. Esterly, Gibbons, 1998, p. 132, fig. 106; Wren Society, IV, pl. 35, bottom

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 22 October 1998 - 24 February 1999

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).