George Dance the Younger was born in London on 1 April 1741, the youngest of five surviving sons and with a younger sister. He enjoyed a Classical education at St Paul's School in the City of London and probably received some architectural training under his father, George Dance the Elder (1695-1768) before being sent, at the age of 17, to Rome. Here he joined his brother Nathaniel - Sir Nathaniel Dance Holland (1735-1811) - painter and, later, landowner and Member of Parliament. Dance studied architecture, it is generally assumed under the direction of Nicolo Giansimone, returning to London six years after he had left, in December 1764, bringing with him the Gold Medal of the Parma Academy for his competition design for a public gallery. During his stay abroad Dance had absorbed the ideas of the new Neo-Classicism and his first commission, All Hallows Church, begun in 1765, is the first strictly Neo-Classical building in Britain as well as a sound demonstration of his practical skills. Early in 1768, just a few days before his father's death, Dance succeeded him as Clerk of the Works to the City of London and remained in that post until his formal resignation in March 1816.

The drawings by the elder George Dance in the Soane Museum are seldom signed - just two of the Mansion House drawings having Geo: Dance. The younger Dance signed only 38 drawings: three early ones (for All Hallows and a monument in Westminster Abbey) having George Dance Junr. He is recorded as 'George Dance the Younger' upon his admission to the post of Clerk of the City Works but 'George Dance Junior' on his appointment to the surveyorship of Newgate Gaol, both in the same week in February 1768 (Kalman p.271). He occasionally added Architect or Archt to his signature and once - on a demonstration drawing of London Bridge - Architect to the Corporation of London. 'Elder' and 'Younger' have been preferred for this catalogue.

Clerk of the Works
As architect to the City of London, Dance carried out a number of town-planning schemes, introducing the circus and crescent to London, as well as preparing unrealised designs for the improvement of the Port of London and for the replacement of London Bridge, and implementing a series of road-widening and other improvements to the streets of the City. His public work included alterations and additions to the Guildhall and Mansion House, new market buildings and debtors' prisons as well as Newgate Gaol and Sessions House and St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics. Private commissions, mostly for country houses, increased from about 1788. From 1793 Dance made a series of pencil portraits of his friends and contemporaries, some of which were published. He did these as a relief from the pressure of his responsibilities as Clerk of the Works: he was, for instance, answerable to more than 20 committees. Dance earned a good income from his civic duties as well as a security not given to the private practitioner and presumably his post gave a certain status. This would have been of no importance to him since he was entirely unpretentious and in any case made his own fame. His feelings about the Corporation are shown by an entry in his friend the painter Joseph Farington's diary for 9 December 1806: 'Dance spoke... of the disappointment He had suffered in the City and regretted that such people shd. Have to determine upon works of art; but added... these are the people that I have had to deal with almost all of my life.'

Royal Academician
Dance was an early member of the Royal Academy, attending its second session on 17 December 1768 (Kalman pp.18-19). Though joint auditor from 1795, on average Dance attended only about three of the 15 annual meetings. Thus, of a proposed history of the Royal Academy, Farington noted (24 November 1817) that 'Dance could do little about it, as excepting what respects the finances of the Academy. He had paid little attention to it.' From 1798 to 1805 Dance was Professor of Architecture and soon after he accepted the appointment spoke to Farington (22 July 1798) 'of his future lectures, and thinks the subject ought to be treated in a more general way... and not to descend, as is common, to receipts of limited proportions'. At that time Dance had 12 months to prepare his lectures but delivered none and was to fall out with Soane over the latter's efforts to replace him. Despite the Royal Academy regulation that members should exhibit annually Dance exhibited on only seven occasions. Thus between 1770 and 1800 he hung only five architectural drawings for four schemes, the rest consisting of some of his portrait drawings.

Dance's opinions of architecture
The impression is that Dance was reluctant to exhibit his work. On the other hand, some of his finished drawings, including one for Shakespeare's Gallery in Pall Mall for Alderman Boydell, were hung in the Commons Council Chamber at the Guildhall; perhaps Dance was unconcerned about the opinions of non-architects. Nor was he willing to publish his thoughts about architecture. Farington records (15 April 1807) that 'P[rince] Hoare urged me to write for His publication "The Artist". He told me that Dance supplied Him with what he had written upon the subject of Architecture.' The Artist was published weekly from 14 March to 1 August 1807 and in 1809 and re-published by John Murray in two volumes in 1810 as The Artist: a collection of essays relative to painting, poetry, sculpture, architecture, the drama, discoveries of science edited by Prince Hoare. Nothing by Dance appeared and if he gave Hoare an essay must have withdrawn it. Soane contributed a self-pitying piece (No.14, 1807) on the difficulties suffered by an architect such as directing 'the most stupid, ignorant and unskilful of workmen' and having the very title of architect adopted 'by mechanics and others'. However, Dance did contribute some practical observations on the design of prisons in a Report from the Committee of Aldermen appointed to visit several gaols in England..., published in 1815.

There is little in the way of surviving correspondence from Dance and almost nothing that reveals his ideas on architecture. A letter to Lord Londonderry (see [SM D3/9/1a]) deals with room and window proportions, doors, dressed stonework and the like in a way that combines aesthetics with function in a straightforward manner. Farington occasionally records conversations that give a hint of Dance's inner convictions. In March 1804 Dance dined with Sir George and Lady Beaumont, his fellow guests being Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Farington who recorded that 'The conversation after dinner and throughout the evening was very metaphysical in which Coleridge had the leading & by far the greatest part of it.... Architecture was spoken of. - Dance said that the Temple of Pestum was only one remove, as Architecture, above Stone-Henge. - He derided the prejudice of limiting Designs in Architecture within certain rules, which in fact though held out as laws had never been satisfactorily explained. He said that in His opinion Architecture unshackled wd. afford to the greatest genius the greatest opportunities of producing the most powerful efforts of the human mind' (25 March 1804). Later in the same month, Farington and Dance visited the house in Duchess Street decorated by Thomas Hope in a variety of styles - Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Turkish, Indian and Chinese as well as contemporary French. Dance thought that 'by the singularity of it good might be done as it might contribute to emancipate the public taste from the rigid adherence to a certain style of architecture & of finishing & unshackle the artists' (31 March 1804). Though Dance saw Hope as an amateur and thus 'not qualified to make a design for any work of consequence' (ibid.) they were both interested in a range of styles and, for instance, shared an early enthusiasm for a round-arched style later termed Rundbogenstil.

Contemporaries
Contemporaries whose work interested Dance included the other founder members of The Architects Club established in 1791: Samuel Pepys Cockerell, Henry Holland and James Wyatt. Cockerell was a friend of Dance's and perhaps it was just coincidence that, in 1778, the contract drawing for the Guildhall's new, semi-Indian front was succeeded only a few weeks later by Cockerell's design for Daylesford House with its 'skilfully grafted oriental details' (Colvin). It is tempting to imagine the two men discussing the nature and sources of Indian architecture both then and later, for Dance continued to use Indian proportions and elements for some of his other buildings and Cockerell went on to design Sezincote.

Among Dance's collected drawings is a copy of Wyatt's plan for Dodington. From this Dance borrowed the idea of a curved linking conservatory wing for Wilderness Park, an arrangement found also at Cockerell's Sezincote. Dance must also have known of Wyatt's top-lit, galleried, central octagon hall at Fonthill Abbey and may have had it in mind when he was designing the Polygon Hall at Coleorton. The Coleorton plan may owe something to Henry Holland's Carlton House with its arrangement of porte-cochere, entrance hall and polygonal hall on axis and with the staircase to one side.

Dance's collected drawings include a copy (made by Soane) of the plan for Berrington Hall by Holland from which Dance may have adapted the courtyard plan for the layout of his unexecuted scheme for Norman Court. On the other hand, the rectangular entrance hall with a circular ceiling supported on pendentives at Berrington had its origins in Dance's common Council Chamber at the Guildhall. And so it goes around, one architect stimulated by another's design idea and adapting it for himself, to have his ideas borrowed in turn. (For Dance and Soane's mutual borrowings see 'Dance and Soane'.)

Architectural heirs
Dance had two remarkable protégés of different generations: John Soane (1753-1857) and Robert Smirke (1780-1867). The last-named was the second son of Dance's friend, the artist Robert Smirke, RA, who carried out the wall paintings in Dance's library at Stratton Park. According to Colvin, the young Smirke having begun in May 1796 as a pupil in Soane's office, left after a few months because of mutual antipathy, owing his subsequent training to Dance and to the surveyor George Bush. On setting up in practice, Smirk's connections soon brought him commissions. An early one was for Lowther Castle which he owed to Dance and Sir George Beaumont. A design for Bayham Hall was not carried out but probably came through Dance who had made an earlier unexecuted design and it was Smirke who remodelled Dance's library at Landsdowne House.

Though Soane might be thought of as Dance's principal architectural heir, John Summerson (1963, p.275) considered that Smirke 'equally with Soane, must be regarded as Dance's artistic legatee. Soane, nearer Dance's age, borrowed as extensively but converted his borrowing and produced a personal style parallel with the late Dance, but very different indeed. It was Smirke who spread the Greek Revival manner' with his Covent Garden Theatre, the College of Physicians and the British Museum and whose inspiration must have included the front of Stratton Park and its Greek Doric portico as well as the Greek Ionic portico of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Dorothy Stroud (pp.230-231) found traces of Dance's influence in the work of Benjamin Latrobe (1764-1820) who had worked as a draughtsman in S. P. Cockerell's office in London before setting up for himself and then emigrating to the United States in 1796, as well as Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844) who was born there. The later (and English) W. J. Donthorn is said to have 'returned to the roots of the rationalist, linear style of neo-classicism... the style handed down by the younger Dance to Soane and Smirke respectively' (O'Donnell, 1978, p.84).

Unable, for whatever reason, to deliver the Royal Academy architectural lectures and seldom exhibiting there, Dance had limited influence. Publication would have brought attention to his work but this was confined to a number of prints such as some of the engraved designs accompanying the Second and Third Report from the Select Committee upon the Improvement of the Port of London, 1799 and 1800; Dance's masterly planning, building and bridge proposals being captured in a painting by William Daniell that was then issued as an aquatint print. An engraving of the principal elevation of Newgate Gaol was published for the Corporation of London in about 1769 and, more notably, a plan and elevation in J.-N.-L. Durand's Recueil et parallèle des édifices (1799-1801, plate 28). Unlike Chambers or Robert and James Adam or Soane, Dance published nothing for as Stroud wrote (p.229) he 'had to devote much of his time to unspectacular or even commonplace matters, while with some of his more important works there were awesome or melancholic associations.' Dance did not need to drum up commissions and theoretical statement or memorialisation would not have been in character.

Nor can it be said that Dance's buildings speak for themselves since very few have survived. The post-war demolition of so many country houses saw the end of Stratton Park and Ashburnham Place though Coleorton remains - for the present. Re-development in the City and its estates beyond the boundary have meant the demolition of Newgate Gaol, St Luke's Hospital and the circuses and crescents of his town-planning schemes. As happens with almost all architects, many of Dance's schemes were not carried out - his designs for the Port of London, for instance, remaining a great 'might-have-been'. The drawings at the Soane Museum, with those of the Corporation of London Record Office, are now the best record of Dance's highly original and independent approach to architecture.

LITERATURE. J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 4th ed., 1963; R. O'Donnell, 'W. J. Donthorn (1799-1859); architecture with "great hardness and decision in the edges"', Architectural History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, XXI, 1978, pp.83-92.

Architect

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