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Reference number

SM D3/13/6

Purpose

Monument in the form of a mausoleum for George Washington (1732-00). Washington, USA, 1800

Aspect

[3] Plan consisting of a circle with arms at compass points, all within a square, and sketch detail of interior

Scale

1/20 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

How sleep the brave who sink to rest / With all their country's Honour blest, some dimensions given and (verso) 4 Sketches of a / Monument of General Washington / by desire of Mr West

Signed and dated

  • 1800

Medium and dimensions

Pen, raw umber wash, pencil, pricked for transfer on laid secretary paper (395 x 495)

Hand

Dance

Watermark

B 1795 and fleur-de-lis

Notes

The plan shows a circular compartment, originally 60 feet in diameter and amended to 70 feet within a solid square, measuring 118 by 118 feet, interrupted by three stepped passages 22 feet wide, with a tomb in the remaining (blind) arm. The pyramid itself stands on a base 5 feet high and on a plinth 35 feet wide. 'Mr West' refers to Benjamin West.

Level

Drawing

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.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).