Scale
½ in to 1 ft
Inscribed
dimensions given including (Carter, pencil) The exact Length of the radius is 16..8¼ and (verso, Dance) Plan of Library / Bookcases &c and (red pen) Plan & Sections of Library Stratton
Signed and dated
Medium and dimensions
Brown pen, pink and yellow washes, pencil hatching on wove paper (395 x 625)
Hand
Dance, Carter
Notes
The library was rectangular with three windows to the east and one to the south with two doors on the west side to the Hall of Communication and breakfast room, and a chimney-piece. Large (folding) doors between the library and drawing room permitted an arrangement preferred by Dance where two or more rooms could be opened up into one, and either side of this door, deep bookcases were arranged on a curve forming an apsidal north end to the library. Earlier general plans ([SM D1/1/15], [SM D1/1/9] and [SM D1/1/10]) had shown swept corners at the south end of the library as well as the north end but later drawings ([SM D1/1/39] and [SM D1/1/38]) show the south end with right-angled corners as here. National Monuments Record photographs (1951) show that, except for a later chimney-piece, the library survived more or less intact until that date. Its most remarkable decorative features were the wall paintings above the bookshelves 'whose red-figure paintings imitate the manner of Greek vases. The paintings [were] probably by the elder Robert Smirke' (Kalman p.163) who carried out (with Biagio Rebecca) something similar for the library at Lansdowne House, London.
Verso
Rough plan (by Carter) and perspective of the garden bridge on the N side
Pencil
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
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
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