Scale
Approximately 27 feet to 1 inch
Inscribed
In pen and brown ink in C18-19 hand, at top left, 2
Signed and dated
- Undated, but datable 1695
Medium and dimensions
Pen and brown ink with grey wash over graphite under-drawing, with additions in graphite, on laid paper, trimmed to the edges of the design and laid down; formerly on early mount with ruled border (see Notes); 63 x 478
Hand
Hawksmoor
Watermark
No watermark
Notes
This sheet was intended to be pasted to the main sheet but appears never to have been so attached. Like [3/2], the sheet was trimmed to the edges of the design. In this case, however, it was also mounted on backing paper and given a ruled ink border and title, 'Greenwich Hospital', identical to those on [2/4] and [3/4] (with a tiny ink cross at the bottom right-hand corner as a marker for the ruled border). It was illustrated with this ruled border in Wren Society, VI, in 1929, but the drawing has since been remounted and the original backing paper, presumably of 18th or early 19th century date, since lost.The drawing illustrates the treatment of the porticoes of the middle and end wards of the seven-block range. On plan (Geraghty 2007, no. 194), these four-column porticoes are applied to the piers of arcades that run continuously from end to end, suggesting a giant order applied to an arcuated wall and a continuous gallery-level walk at second-floor level. The porticoes of the middle and end ward blocks of the seven-block range would have been answerable to the porticoes of the hall and chapel blocks, all being on the same planes, set forward of the fronts of the blocks themselves. A disadvantage of these giant-order fronts, however, was that they would have shadowed the upper rooms of the ward blocks behind, and this may be one reason why Wren never returned to the idea. The extreme right-hand bay on the sheet was only partly inked, as it would have been overlapped by the left end of [3/2], where Hawksmoor has drawn the outline of the door in graphite. However, the two sheets were probably never pasted together, for Hawksmoor has used only this sheet to experiment with the addition of pediments to the fronts of the balustrades above the intermediate doors.
Literature
Viktor Fürst, The Architecture of Sir Christopher Wren, pp. 89-95 (where incorrectly dated 1696-1702); Wren Society, VI, pl. 25
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
