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Reference number
Purpose
Aspect
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Inscribed
Signed and dated
- 1797
Medium and dimensions
Hand
Notes
The elevation is framed by trees and set in a landscape with a cloudy sky. Interestingly, the title is sanserif capitals, outlined in sepia and washed with green earth watercolour.
The principal front is flat except for the corner piers and centre bay (crowned by a pediment), which advance less than a foot. The tall, narrow windows are unadorned, except for voussoirs, and the upper ones are fronted by simple X window guards. Dance draws in the chimney stacks and the lanterns that light the stairs and rise above the roof like ungainly sheds, features rare in a presentation drawing where the functional necessities are usually glossed over.
REPRODUCED. Stroud fig.76b; D. Stillman, 'The Neo-Classical transformation of the English country house' in The Fashioning and functioning of the British country house, edited by G. Jackson-Stops, catalogue of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1990, fig.10.
Level
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).