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  • image SM volume 81/1
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Reference number

SM volume 81/1

Purpose

[84] Progress drawing, May 1812

Aspect

Perspective of the west front

Signed and dated

  • May 29th 1812. G B.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil and coloured washes, watercolour technique, within a single-ruled border (see note below) on laid paper (178 x 354)

Hand

George Basevi (1794-1845, pupil 1810-1816)

Watermark

Fellows 1804

Notes

This drawing is the first of a series of construction progress drawings made on site during the summer of 1812 by Soane's pupils. Basevi would have made a rough sketch and then redrawn the view into the record book at the office in Lincoln's Inn Fields. When Basevi copied the drawing he added a scrolled trompe l'oeil effect so that it looked as if it was pasted-in, like most of the other drawings. The Mausoleum and foundations of the almshouses are shown at an early stage of construction. The rest of the progress drawings would have been sketched on site and then pasted into Soane's record book.

Literature

C. Davies, 'Masters of building: the first independent purpose-built picture gallery: Dulwich Picture Gallery', Architect's Journal, April 1984, pp. 53-54
F. Nevola, Soane's favourite subject: the story of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2000, pp. 91 & 191

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).