(feint pencil) bar scale of 1/16 in to 1 ft (plans), section to a larger scale

as above, Plan / of the / Ground Floor labelled (in small serif caps) Hereford Street, Keeper, Passage and three rooms labelled Library, two XX by XXX and the third LII feet by XX Feet; Plan / of the / Principal Story and Council Chamber / XIX by XVI, Anti, Museum (three times) LII feet by XX feet, (twice) XX by XXX

• (small sans serif caps) I Soane Arch^t and April MDCCLXXXIV

Pen, sepia and buff washes, shaded and with quadruple ruled pen and wash border on laid paper with some newsprint backing, mostly removed (478 x 690)

Robert Baldwin (fl.1762-1804) ; ? George Dance (1741-1825)

J Whatman

The drawing is attributed to Robert Baldwin; the sculpture may have been drawn by Dance - he was better at figure drawing than either Baldwin or Soane. The use of sans serif lettering is first found in Soane's designs for a British Senate House, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1779 and drawn and lettered by an ? Italian hand (q.v.).
Exhibited at the Royal Academy in the Spring of 1784, the drawing is in a fragile state through old water and other damage. It was engraved as plates 46-7 in Soane's Plans, elevations and sections of buildings (1788). Titled 'A Building proposed as a Musem for the Dilettanti Society', Soane explained that 'This design was to apply two unfinished houses in Hereford-Street, adjoining Camelford-House, to the accommodation of the Dilettanti Society; it was the intention of the noble owner, the Right Honorable Thomas Lord Camelford, to have presented them to the Society for the public advantage, but, on consideration, the members thought their finances unequal to such an establishment, the idea was therefore relinquished.' The engraved plans are for the ground floor with three library rooms connected by two doors and a 'Keepers Parlour' while the first floor has three museum compartments (of the same dimensions as the library) and a 'Council Chamber'. The 'interior view of part of the museum' is a section through the principal floor showing a screen composed of two fluted (Ionic in the drawing, Corinthian in the engraving) columns either side of a large alcove with an equestrian statue on a plinth behind which is the stair. On the walls, aedicules flanked by pedestals display sculpted figures and overhead are barrel vaulted ceilings.

P. du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982, pp.11-12, 237-9, 243

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