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Drawings and presentation drawings by J.M. Gandy of variant designs for the principal staircase, 6 to 18 August 1799 (8)

Notes

Drawings 39, 42 to 46 are drawings in Joseph Michael Gandy's sketchbook and were probably preliminary drawings for the more finished drawings 40, 41 and 43. A perspective of the staircase at Holwood, probably drawing 40, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800.

Drawings 39 to 45 show the principal staircase as a leisurely double-return form. The drawings vary in the decorative treatment of the first floor ceiling and balustrades, the distribution of columns and arches, and the skylight form. Drawings 40, 41 and 44 show Ionic columns on the first floor supporting four lunettes and a pendentive dome. The ceiling is ornamented with incised beams spanning between each column and pilaster. Drawing 39, probably an unfinished perspective, shows a skylight on a circular plan over the stairwell, omitting a stair rail and ceiling ornament.

The staircase is surrounded by a corridor on the first floor. To the south (left-hand side of drawings 39 to 41), two quarter-stairs ascend to a door into the bowed drawing room.

Drawing 46 is a rough perspective of an alternative stair that corresponds with earlier plans (drawings 31 to 35). In the perspective, an ionic colonnade and three round-headed arches surround the stairwell, and wide segmental lunettes support a shallow-domed ceiling.

SM 4/1/3 is a lecture drawing and a copy of drawing 42 at a larger scale, showing an interior perspective of the stairwell from the ground floor.

The V&A has one drawing showing an interior perspective of the best staircase as in drawings 39 and 46 (P. du Prey, V&A catalogue, cat.s 79-81).

Gandy worked as an assistant in Soane's office from 1798 to 1801, thereafter receiving occasional commissions for his exceptional draughtsmanship.

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

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

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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Contents of Drawings and presentation drawings by J.M. Gandy of variant designs for the principal staircase, 6 to 18 August 1799 (8)