George Dance left England for Italy in December 1758. He was 17 years old and was to join his older brother Nathaniel, a painter. Leaving from Gravesend, George arrived in Leghorn, went from there to Florence and by May 1759 both brothers were in Rome. Nathaniel wrote from there to his father (28 July 1759) How trifling are the Services (in my Power to shew my / dear brother Georgy) ... his good / Sense and good Nature would deserve from me more than / is in my Power to do for him' (see [SM D2/13/1]).

From Rome, George wrote to his father (4 October 1760): 'Honour'd Sir ... The Architect I / study with, answers to my expectations in every respect. I am measuring the/Antiquities, practising Drawing with assuiduity, & studying Geometry very closely./... My Master is going to give me some fix'd Subject to ca--- (illegible) my Invention Upon: in short my head is full of Architecture & I hope to / give a tolerable good account of myself when I return to England.' The course of study - measured drawing of the ancient Classical buildings of Rome, draughtsmanship, geometry and design - was well suited to a future professional architect. The letter continued: 'After I have measur'd the Arch of Constantine which I am now about I / shall begin the cupola of St Peter's which I shall send to you as soon as / finished... all (the) money I can save, I shall lay out in Casts of Antique Cornices; D[rawings] / & Prints, which will be of service to me as long as I live; & of wh[ich a] Man may make a fine collection in Rome, as cheap as any whe[re].' Those measured drawings of the Arch of Constantine and the dome of St Peter's have not survived, perhaps lost en route to London. In a later letter (31 January 1761) Dance writes: 'I should be glad to send you my valuable Gesses [casts]... but am afraid the French will get them if I run the hazard / at this time.' Nathaniel Dance wrote to his father (3 February 1762) of sending a painting to London: 'it will be very dangerous / risking anything by Sea, at least without / Convoy upon account of this / War with Spain'. Some such loss may account for the relatively small number of measured drawings Dance seems to have made considering he was abroad for six years - either that or he found the diversions of Rome hard to resist.

The expense of having casts taken of the entablature of the Temple of Castor and Pollax left Dance broke for in his next letter to his father (2 November 1760) he wrote 'it has necessit[a] / -ted me to beg of you (if it will put you to no inconvenience) to send me / [a] small part of my allowance, a little sooner than May'. The elder George Dance's personal account book (RIBA mss Collection DaFam/ 1/1) records on 9 January 1761 'To my son George at Rome 30 ___ ' and this was gratefully received by 31 January. Money became short again for on 21st August 1761, George wrote 'our funds are very low' and on 12 September, his brother Nathaniel writing to his sister Hester said 'I believe George wou'd be glad my father wou'd send him / a little money - He has been without any a long time.' On 3 October, George wrote to his father 'I have been reduced to the / utmost necessity for want of money ... but however, I hope / it will do me no harm in the end.' Four days later he wrote 'I reced yours of the 18th Sept. with a Bill inclos'd for 30£ for which / return you my most hearty thanks ... for I have been ab^t two months without a farthing.' This must have taught George to manage things better and may have curbed his spending on casts, drawings and prints.

A few of the prints that Dance collected in Rome may be among those in a group of mostly bridge designs at the Soane Museum [SM 55/1/1]. Others may have been sold in June 1837 with his library which was, as David Watkin wrote, 'rich in Italian architectural publications... [with] works by Bosio, Falda, Labacco, Montanus, Pozzo, Scamozzi, Serlio, Vanvitelli and Vignola, emphasis[ing] the obvious truth that eighteenth century neo-classicism was wholly non-insular in character'. The buildings that Dance drew in Rome - such as the Temple of Castor and Pollux with its unique Corinthian order; the rare Roman Doric of the Temple of Hercules at Cora; and the Temple of Vesa at Tivoli near Rome with a Corinthian order and, like Cora, with 'Tivoli' door openings - suggests an attraction to the unusual that lasted throughout his career. A group of record drawings in the Visentini workshop manner collected by Dance are a reminder of the influence of the oculus, dome and plan of the Pantheon and of the Pyrimid of Caestius.

Dance financed himself, to an extent, by such things as designing two chimney-pieces for Lord Mainwaring, teaching the orders of architecture to the Reverend John Hinchcliffe for two guineas and by making a drawing of the gallery in the Palazzo Colonna, 1654-65, for Thomas Pitt (later Lord Camelford). Dance was also seeking to ingratiate himself: for him as for other Grand Tour architects, such as the Adam and Mylne brothers, part of the object of being abroad was to cultivate the friendship of influential fellow countrymen.

As Nathaniel Dance wrote to his father from Rome (3 February 1862); 'the acquaintances One makes with English Noblemen in Rome are of / very great consequence when one meets them in England.- Their having / known you abroad, makes them interest themselves for you more than / otherwise they would think of'.

Dance's travels outside Rome are scarcely documented. In April and May 1762 he was at Porto D'Antio (Anzio) where he made a plan of the Villa Albani that has not survived. In that same year, he had intended to enter for the concorso of the Academia di Bella Arti in Parma but failed to finish the drawings in time. Earlier, in about 1760, Dance had begun working on a competition design for a large building (a palazzo?) with a theatre [SM 48/4/4] but did not finish it in time for submission. However, he successfully competed in the 1763 concorso for a 'Magnifica Galleria' [SM D4/11/5], spending eight months making the required five drawings, was declared the winner in May and wrote to tell his father of his success on 7th June 1763. In his correspondence with his father he had referred to returning to help him with his practice and a year after his Parma triumph he came home, being in Naples in June, in Paris by November and reaching London in December 1764 - in time for his sister's wedding.

LITERATURE. Stroud pp.59-73; Kalman pp. 53-68; Watkin (ed.), Sale catalogues of librariesof eminent persons, vol.4, 1972, pp.193-216; J.Ingamells (ed.), A Dictionary of British and Irish travellers in Italy 1701-1800, 1997 (entries for George Dance and J.Hinchcliffe).

OTHER SOURCES. Contemporary copies of 18 letters written in Rome, 1760-63, by George and Nathaniel Dance to their father, mother and sister, RIBA MSS Collection DaFam/1/2, presented to the RIBA by George W Dance of Melbourne, Australia in 1953. The originals appear not to have survived.