This was an exercise made under the tutelage of Dance's father whose handwriting can be seen on some of the drawings [SM volume 19/11], [SM volume 19/8] and [SM volume 19/10]. The Young Dance made a number of variant designs for a 'Gentleman's Country Seat' and the five drawings in the Soane Museum can be related to another six in the RIBA Drawings Collection that were made for the same project. These are stuck into a copy of The Architecture of A. Palladio (3rd ed., 1742) edited by Giacome Leoni - the 'Dance Leoni' volume - to which were added many drawings made from perhaps 1758, the year that the young Dance left for Rome.

Essentially the designs are all for a three-storey, six-part villa with the entrance facing north and with a room on either side having a bow on the east and west fronts. The south front has a projecting centre that is bowed or chamfered or flat with the two later plans (at the RIBA) showing first a bow and then a square projection. Of the six front elevations, the two earliest [SM volume 19/7] and [SM volume 19/9] have an Ionic portico in antis which is then banished in the next drawing to reappear either side of the centre and framing the first and second floor windows. Of the four later front elevations (at the RIBA), two have Ionic porticos, one has a giant order and a dome and another is so 'stripped' that it may in fact, be unfinished.

That Dance had no experience of country houses can be seen by the clumsy planning in which kitchen, scullery, larder, drying room and footman's room are mixed up with the reception rooms on the ground floor. The later schemes (at the RIBA) improve on those at the Soane Museum so that the final scheme (Dance Leoni Nos 43 and 44) is more disciplined and compact with a basement storey for the kitchen and other service rooms clearly shown.

Kalman drew attention to the related designs at the Soane Museum and suggested that they may be further associated with a design for the 'Garden front of a house for a gentleman in the country' exhibited by Dance at the Royal Academy in 1771 (see [SM D2/8/24] and [SM D2/8/25]).

LITERATURE. Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol.C-F, 1972, entry for the 'Dance Leoni' volume by Harold Kalman,pp. 59-63.