4/15 in to 1 ft

SKETCH OF THE LIBRARY, LANSDOWN HOVSE Signed: Geo:Dance Arch^t

• c.1788-94

Pen, light red, sepia, warm sepia, raw umber, burnt umber, blue, scarlet, yellow, green and black washes, shaded, pencil, watercolour technique, on (original) back board with double ruled border on laid paper laid down on (old) board (395 x 785 on 475 x 865)

Dance

[SM D3/3/3] and [SM D3/3/4] are mounted and have borders in the same fashion and are signed in the same way as [SM D3/3/5]; the three drawings seem to form a presentation set. The staining on the back board of [SM D3/3/5] suggests that the drawing was once framed.

The bookcases (which have eight shelves of differing heights) run the length of the room, organised in pilaster-divided bays of varying widths that emphasise the three windows and the plan form.

The scheme of painted wall decoration stresses the Roman character of the room and consists of a warm stone-coloured background with dark brown panels each with a figure and with festoons, garlands and rinceaux in between and, below the cornice, a meander pattern painted in scarlet. The ceiling is similarly decorated but with lunettes and parallelogrammatic panels that accentuate the domes. (For more on the Lansdowne House frescoes, see the note on painted wall decoration in Appendix 1.)

REPRODUCED. D. Stillman, 'The Gallery for Lansdowne House', Art Bulletin, LII, 1970, pp.75-80, fig.12; Stroud fig.54b; Soane: Connoisseur & collector, catalogue of an exhibition at the Soane Museum 1995, fig.32; I. C. Bristow, Architectural colour in British interiors 1615-1840, 1996, fig. 174.

NOTE ON LETTERING

The drawing catalogued here (which was certainly made by Dance) uses sanserif capitals, applied with a brush and black wash, for the inscription. Of Dance's drawings at the Soane Museum only one other has sanserif letters: a presentation elevation for a house at Paul, Cornwall, 1797, where it was used for the title ([SM D3/14/5]). There is also a sanserif, Latin frieze inscription for the Royal College of Surgeons in James Lewis's hand, 1810 ([SM D5/7/2]). Soane was an earlier and much more consistent user of sanserif lettering and is said to have regularly employed it on the majority of his presentation drawings from 1784 onwards (M. Richardson, 'Soane's use of drawings', Apollo, CXXXI, 1990, p.239. 'He may have found a model in the drawings made by his former master George Dance of the inscription of the little Republican Roman temple of Vesta at Tivoli in which an idealised geometrical monoline form is conferred on the much-weathered original' (J. Moseley, Caslon's Egyptian: the first sanserif type, 1988, [p.4]). 'Monoline' letters have strokes of uniform thickness and though the Tivoli inscription has very small serifs, these are insignificant compared with other lettering of the Roman Republican period.

Drawing

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