[58] Early study

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - Bank of England, City of London for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, 1788-1834 (1356)
    - 1791-1801 Rebuilding of offices in the east wing and north-east extension (431)
      - Bank Stock Office, 1791-1793 (73)
        George Dance's studies, c. November 1791-February 1792 (16)

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Reference number

SM 10/4/19

Purpose

[58] Early study

Aspect

Rough plans, interior perspectives, sections and details and (verso) rough plan, section and interior perspectives

Inscribed

(wall panel) B - - S - [illegible] / Office and (pencil, office) dimensions given

Signed and dated

datable to November 1791

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen, pencil and warm sepia wash (verso) brown pen, pencil and hatching on thin wove paper (328 x 507)

Hand

George Dance (1741-1825)

Notes

Dance's first studies for the rebuilding of the Bank Stock Office explore various single and triple-domed plan alternatives, as well as decorative schemes for the arches and domes. The recto of this drawing shows elaborate compound mouldings and floral decorations for the semicircular arches (some horseshoe-shaped with flared bases so as to create an implied circular section). On the verso, Dance experiments with a simpler, linear treatment, more appropriate for the hall's commercial character, closer to what Soane would eventually use in the Bank Stock Office (panelled soffits and banded rustication on the spandrels and walls), and also in the 1794-95 Rotunda (serpentine and scrolled ornament) and the 1818 Five Per Cent Office (continuous fluting for the arches).

In plan, Dance's early studies pay little attention to the existing structure of Taylor's hall, making no use of existing foundations, mistaking the hall's relation to the Rotunda, and projecting a central plan scheme with projecting semi-circular apses altogether impossible within the existing rectangular footprint. The inscribed wall panel and the dimensions 64.0 and 45.0 do, however, securely identify these studies as for the Bank Stock Office. Similarly the studies of SM archive 14/80/3 do not take into account the existing foundations.

Some of the studies, particularly the interior perspective and arch details on the recto of this image resemble Dance drawings for a similar domed space with horseshoe-shaped arches that Jill Lever believes to be studies for a George Washington monument, based on their larger scale, projecting apses, Staffage, and angels in the spandrels (D3/14/34 and D3/14/32, misidentified as being for the Bank Stock Office in M. Richardson, Soane: connoisseur & collector, Soane Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1995, no. 36).

Literature

M. Richardson & M. Stevens (ed.), John Soane architect: master of space and light, Royal Academy of Arts, 1999, p. 226, cat. 123

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).