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  • image SM volume 111/11
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Reference number

SM volume 111/11

Purpose

[9] Presentation drawing for engraving of the east (Park) elevation, nearly as executed, c. 1691

Aspect

Elevation

Scale

About 12 feet to 1 inch

Inscribed

In pencil at bottom centre in C19 hand, Hampton Court Palace

Signed and dated

  • Undated, but datable c.1690-94

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink with grey washes over graphite under drawing, with black ink ruled border; on thick laid paper, folded vertically a third its length from left end, the right two thirds laid down on JH WHATMAN 1811 mount; 247 x 724

Hand

Hawksmoor

Watermark

Strasbourg Lily (top half cut off)

Notes

This drawing records the design at a more advanced stage than on 6, above (110/9), for it shows the relief statuary in the pediment and the drapery and foliage relief above the central window more or less as executed in c.1691-94. Work on the Park range did not begin until 1690. By February 1692 Thomas Hill was being paid 'for work done in the great modillion cornice in the Porticu next the Parke' (Wren Society, IV, p. 52). As the design does not show the carved reliefs on the pilaster panels of the central attic (where the stone for four 'attique' windows was carved by John Clerk in 1691), and includes an unexecuted proposal for statuary on the balustrade, the most likely date is 1691 when work was at the upper levels of the elevation.

The purpose of the drawing for engraving is indicated by the use of thick printer's paper, the shading conventions, the ruled border frame, and the application of cast shadow from right to left, in reverse of the usual sense (compare 5 and 6 above; 110/10 and 9). The shading of the outer parts of the elevation in a uniform mid-grey tone denotes the slight recession of this part of the elevation from the central seven-bay section. It may also have been intended to emphasise the contrast between stone cladding in the centre and brick walls with stone dressings to the sides. No engraving is known to have been made from this drawing or from its companion sheet, 111/15.

Literature

Wren Society, IV, pl. 18, top; Thurley, Hampton Court, fig. 145

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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