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  • image SM volume 111/9

Reference number

SM volume 111/9

Purpose

[10/1] Record drawing of the east elevation of King Charles II Building, probably prepared in connection with the decision in 1711 to duplicate the north pavilion of this building as the new north pavilion of the base wing

Aspect

Elevation

Scale

About 10 feet to 4/5 inch, that is about 12 ½ feet to 1 inch

Inscribed

In pen and brown ink in C18 hand beneath central portico, Part of Gree[n]wich Hospital; and with many notes of dimensions, including, at bottom right of portico, 8 should be; and in same hand in faint graphite, to left of C18 title, 293 foot

Signed and dated

  • Undated, but probably dating to 1712, and certainly in period 1705-12

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink with grey wash over graphite under-drawing; on laid paper, with central vertical fold through left-centre bay; 169 x 585.

Hand

John James

Watermark

Top of small fleur-de-lis (rest cut off) at top right side of sheet

Notes

This drawing was probably prepared at the time of the decision in 1711-12 to rebuild the north pavilion of the base wing to match the north pavilion of King Charles II Building. On 15 November 1711, at a meeting of the 'Generall Court', the Directors decided that when work recommenced 'the first Building shall be by taking down the Pavilion of brick at the North-West angle, and building it up with stone, in the manner as the adjoining Pavilion built by King Charles, and as expressed in the perspective before mentioned'. By 8 May 1712, the design work had progressed far enough for the Directors to request the 'Estimate and Charge for altering and rebuilding the N.W. Brick pavilion of the Bass Wing, as ordered last Generall Court' (Wren Society, VI, pp. 65).The drawing forms a pair with John James's elevation of the extended north elevation [10/2] and is attributed to him on the basis of the hand of the inscriptions and the extreme precision of the outline pen technique (see [8/7-8]).

Literature

Wren Society, pl. 20

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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.

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