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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- 'Original Sketches / Miscellaneous / Architectural / Subjects': album with 195 drawings by Soane, Dance, Holland and others, dated c.1757 to 1818 (volume 42)
  - Volume 42/119: John Soane (1753-1837) : Domed public building

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Reference number

SM volume 42/119

Purpose

Sketch design

Aspect

Rough part-elevation of a domed building with a six-column portico flanked by niches and with colonnaded wings

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen, pencil on laid paper (199 x 316)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

scrolly ? W encircled

Notes

Perhaps related to another rough and unfinished design for a domed public building in this volume (42/131).P.du Prey, Sir John Soane, 1985, in series of 'Catalogues of architectural drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum', catalogue 48-55 reproduces (catalogue 48, plate 11 top) a rough elevation with plan of which the domed centre corresponds with the drawing catalogued here. The V&A drawing is one of eight rough drawings that du Prey has grouped together and that are unhelpfully inscribed by one of Soane's assistants, C.J.Richardson (1809-71) as a 'Triumphal Bridge'. As du Prey writes: they largely consist of 'a set of three pavilions all domed, or in some cases with a flat attic distinguishing the central pavilion. The general scheme resembles most closely Soane's British Senate House (q.v.). But it is conceivable that the forecourt facade of the Triumphal Bridge is also being referred to (q.v.).'

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).