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  • image SM D3/13/5
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Reference number

SM D3/13/5

Purpose

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

Aspect

[4] Elevation and section, rough interior perspective, and rough details for the treatment of the entrance

Scale

1/20 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

2, The American People / in grateful remembrance of / GEORGE WASHINGTON / The American Nation [or] people raiseth monument, some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • 1800

Medium and dimensions

Pen, raw umber and sepia washes, hatching pricked for transfer on laid secretary paper (395 x 495)

Hand

Dance

Watermark

B 1795 and fleur-de-lis

Notes

The elevation shows Washington's statue within a pyramid 108 feet hight, glimpsed through an entrance similar to that on [SM D3/13/4], that is having a primitive appearance with 'three colossal monoliths'. Further details see Dance give the entrance a more archaic character 'by sloping the jambs inwards' and then turning it into 'megaliths straight from some prehistoric dolmen'. (H. Colvin Architecture and the after-life, 1991, p.358). The section shows the central circular compartment with splayed sides rising to a domical ceiling.

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).