Royal College of Surgeons, 41-42 (now 35-43) Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn, Camden, London, 1805-12 (with James Lewis)

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George Dance office drawings: the drawings of George Dance the Elder and George Dance the Younger
- Public buildings (3)
  - Royal College of Surgeons, 41-42 (now 35-43) Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn, Camden, London, 1805-12 (with James Lewis) (226). Survey drawings, preliminary designs, design and working drawings

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Reference number

SM D5/7/2

Purpose

Royal College of Surgeons, 41-42 (now 35-43) Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn, Camden, London, 1805-12 (with James Lewis)

Aspect

[68] Elevation of front with attic storey partly concealed by a parapet and with Ionic portico and sculptured arms and urns above the entablature

Scale

¼ in to 1 ft

Inscribed

QUÆ PROSVNT OMNIBVS ARTES (in frieze, sanserif lettering, 'These Arts Benefit All')

Signed and dated

1805-12

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, raw sienna, grey and green earth washes, shaded, pencil on wove paper stuck down on (old) back board (455 x 620 on 465 x 635)

Hand

Lewis, Dance

Notes

The parapet with pedestals crowning the cornice of the portico is now taller and more emphatic. Since the drawing is presumed to have been made by Lewis, it must be his contribution and was retained in the following elevations. Though Dance sought to lighten it with balustrades ([SM D3/13/9] and [SM D5/7/5]), the substantial parapet became part of the executed design. The urns on the pedestals of the parapet were added (in pencil) by Dance. The windows to the ground and first floor have semicircular heads as do the doors. Differently worded frieze inscriptions appear on other drawings, all employing capitals with serifs. Here, Dance experiments with sanserif lettering and, with a green wash, implies that this was to be executed in metal.

REPRODUCED. C. Yanni, Nature's museums: Victorian science and the architecture of display, 1999, fig. 2.13.

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).