[33] Working drawing for approved plan

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Public buildings
  - London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, Southwark for the Governors of Dulwich College, 1811-1813 (108)
    - Revisions to the approved design, 12 July to 19 October 1811 (14)

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Reference number

SM 65/4/62

Purpose

[33] Working drawing for approved plan

Aspect

Enlarged plan for the north half of the Gallery, as if viewed from College Road

Inscribed

Whole content 151:9, (pencil) calculation and dimensions given

Signed and dated

datable to July 1811

Medium and dimensions

Pen and rose pink wash, partly pricked for transfer on wove paper with one fold mark (576 x 695)

Hand

Soane office with pencil additions by Soane

Notes

The plans include the arcade running along the east front, agreed at the meeting of 12 July. There are now four narrow entrances for the almshouses, which separate the east front into five sections; the two-storey end bays, the adjacent almhouse bays defined by three windows and the entrance vestibule for the Gallery in the centre. The drawings show the Mausoleum as a cruciform projection.

This drawing shows fireplaces in the large Gallery rooms, indicated by niches in the wall, however, SM 15/1/1 and SM 15/1/2 show only flues embedded in the Gallery walls. In the alternative plans Soane explores different heating options. In 'Heating methods and their impact on Soane's work: Lincoln's Inn Fields and Dulwich Picture Gallery', Journal of Society of Architectural Historians, 52/1, March 1993, pp. 26-58, Todd Willmert writes of Soane's indecisiveness about the heating of the Gallery. It is not known whether the Gallery had fireplaces or not but the central steam system would definitely have been the main source for heating the space. Fireplaces may have been employed to provide additional heat or purely for aesthetic purposes.

Literature

F. Nevola, Soane's favourite subject: the story of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2000, pp. 48 & 182

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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).