Preliminary design for the south wall

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / Preliminary design for the south wall

Browse

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 42/123 : John Soane (1753-1837): Gothic Library at Stowe House, Buckinghamshire for the 1st Marquess of Buckingham, c. 1806

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM volume 42/123 recto and verso

Purpose

Preliminary design for the south wall

Aspect

Perspectival elevation (with part-plan and sketchy indication of ceiling treatment) showing alternative designs for windows:one with a Gothic four-centred arch and spandrels and the other with Gothic tabernacle work and between the windows, an alcove with a lancet arch; (verso) rough detail of spandrel

Inscribed

(verso) some dimensions and calculations given

Signed and dated

datable to c. 1806

Medium and dimensions

Sepia, light red and blue washes, pencil (verso) pen on laid paper (292 x 215)

Hand

Soane

Notes

The library at Stowe was the only instance of Soane's use of Gothic for a domestic interior. The first dated designs were made in January 1805 and the library with its vestibule and staircase to the floor above was completed in the following year. McCarthy dates the drawing catalogued here to about 1806 and comments that 'it is rather a surprise to find at this date the decoration of the south or window wall of the room had not yet been decided upon.' (op.cit., p.141) As executed, the alcoves for statues were omited and dummy bookcase fronts were placed between the three windows which more or less relate to the left-hand design though with trefoil-arched heads, and with glazed rather than solid bottom panels.
See SM 33/3/B1-61 for designs for the library at Stowe and see also Concise Catalogue

Literature

M. McCarthy, 'Soane's "Saxon" Room at Stowe', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XLIV, No.2, 1985, pp.129-46; D.Stroud, Sir John Soane, architect, 2nd ed., 1996, pp.191-3

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).