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  • image SM 63/6/21

Reference number

SM 63/6/21

Purpose

[5] Presentation drawing for the monument, datable to October 1788

Aspect

Elevation; profile; section; and plan

Scale

to a scale

Signed and dated

  • October 1788 (see Notes)

Medium and dimensions

Pen and grey and pink washes, watercolour technique, on laid paper (445 x 580)

Hand

John McDonnell (pupil 1786-91)

Watermark

J Whatman and fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche and W below

Notes

In this drawing, light and shadow effectively reveal the monument's depth and contours. The varying surfaces of the marbles are also represented, with grey Dove marble on the backing slab, white and grey veined marble on the aedicule and strigilated ends of the base, and white statuary stone on the tablets and urn.

This drawing is probably the presentation drawing Thomas Neill (clerk, 1786-1793) brought with him on 24 October 1788 (Journal No 1). Soane's Journal No 1 records that the drawing was made by his pupil John McDonnell.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Soane and Death, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 26 February - 12 May 1996

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).