[4] Early rough design for entrance front, attributed to George Dance

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [4] Early rough design for entrance front, attributed to George Dance

Browse

Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Soane's architectural education: Royal Academy and Italy including measured drawings: 1770-1780
  - Soane's architectural education including theoretical designs made for the Royal Academy Schools and for exhibition at the Royal Academy, 1770-80, and in Italy, 1778-80
    - Rough preliminary designs, some attributed to George Dance, and design 'for a Mausoleum to the Memory of James King drowned June 9. 1776' , 1776-7, with J.M.Gandy perspectives, 1799-1800 (19)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM volume 42/86

Purpose

[4] Early rough design for entrance front, attributed to George Dance

Aspect

Rough perspective showing a three-storey concave front with a tunnel-like entrance flanked by niches with, above, first and second floors fronted by columns

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, hatching (230 x 185)

Hand

previously attributed to John Flaxman, re-attributed to George Dance (1741-1825)

Watermark

presently stuck down and not visible

Notes

This design and SM volume 42/88 both show the central part of a gigantic mausoleum on a segmental plan with a deep, round-arched entrance approached by a long and wide flight of stairs. The walls and openings are decorated with huge urns and sculpture that dwarf the tiny mourners. Interestingly, this drawing shows two colonnaded storeys of equal height above a base, that is, a three-storey building with presumably dome and drum. Soane's final designs are for a three-storey mausoleum. SM volume 42/88 has striking bracketed pedestals for sculpture and Greek Doric is used for both designs. du Prey attributed this drawing to John Flaxman but here it has been re-attributed to George Dance; SM volume 42/88 is by the same hand. The stylish skeleton figures of Death, and of Winged Victory, as well as the draughtsmanship and the dramatic expressiveness of the design do suggest George Dance. In any case, the hand is certainly not Soane's for as Margaret Richardson (February 2008) commented: 'the sketches are very three-dimensional (which Soane's tend not to be)'.

Literature

P. du Prey, John Soane’s architectural education 1753-80, 1977, p.98
P. du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982, p.345 fn.43

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).