[103] Progress drawing, August 1812

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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)
    - Site progress drawings, May to September 1812 (23)

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Reference number

SM volume 81/19

Purpose

[103] Progress drawing, August 1812

Aspect

View of lead melting

Signed and dated

August 12^th 1812

Medium and dimensions

Pencil and coloured washes, watercolour technique, shaded within a single-ruled black wash border on laid paper (235 x 350)

Hand

George Basevi or George Allen Underwood (both pupils recorded in the Day Book entry for 12 August 1812)

Watermark

not visible

Notes

This drawing usefully illustrates one aspect of the plumber's trade. Namely, the re-use of old lead by melting so as to provide the material for pipes, flashings, gutters and other leadwork. William Good, who was paid £777.16.3 and Lancelot Burton, who was paid £385.14.3, were employed as the plumbers. It is recorded that on April 18, June 9 and 24, and July 10 Good was 'cramping lead' and on August 18 Burton had a 'carriage home of old lead and cuttings'. The information about the tradesmen is from the building accounts, SM Bill Book G, folios 413-442.

Literature

F. Nevola, Soane's favourite subject: the story of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2000, pp. 109 & 193
C. Davies, 'Masters of building: the first independent purpose-built picture gallery: Dulwich Picture Gallery', Architect's Journal, April 1984, pp. 55 & 65

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.

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