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View of a Design for a Mausoleum and Cenotaph, 1776
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Joseph Michael Gandy ARA (1771 - 1843)
View of a Design for a Mausoleum and Cenotaph, 1776
Watercolour on paper
Museum number: P271
On display: North Drawing Room
All spaces are in No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields unless identified as in No. 12, Soane's first house.
For tours https://www.soane.org/your-visit
Curatorial note
Although the earliest (1837) inventories of Sir John Soane's Museum describe this perspective as 'View of a Design for a Mausoleum and Cenotaph' it is actually a perspective rendering of Soane's desgin for a mausoleum to his friend James King, drowned in a boating accident on the Thames on 9 June 1776.
Soane had been invited on the outing, but declined due to the pressure of working on his Triumphal Bridge for the RA Gold Medal competiton. His refusal was fortuitous because as he later recorded: ‘Thus as, like my regretted friend, I could not swim, the circumstance of my being employed on the drawings of the bridge preserved me from a watery grave’ (Soane, Memoirs) Soane regarded this as a providential escape.
Soane had been invited on the outing, but declined due to the pressure of working on his Triumphal Bridge for the RA Gold Medal competiton. His refusal was fortuitous because as he later recorded: ‘Thus as, like my regretted friend, I could not swim, the circumstance of my being employed on the drawings of the bridge preserved me from a watery grave’ (Soane, Memoirs) Soane regarded this as a providential escape.
Literature
Sir John Soane, Memoirs of a Professional Architect, 1835, pp. 13-14
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