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Presentation design for an amphitheatre and round pond in the garden
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Reference number
SM drawer 62/1/2
Purpose
Presentation design for an amphitheatre and round pond in the garden
Aspect
Plan
Scale
100 feet to just over 1 1/5 inches (30.5 mm) (drawn scale)
Signed and dated
- c.1724-28
Medium and dimensions
Pen and brown ink with grey wash over pencil; on laid paper, with two small C18-20 repairs on rear edges; 525 x 372
Hand
Charles Bridgeman
Watermark
IHS IVILLEDARY
Notes
The garden in the plan is 918 feet wide by 1430 feet long, measuring to the single-line border. The double-ruled outer border is a frame for presentation purposes and suggests that the plan was to be engraved.The design was partly executed before William Kent took over as garden designer at Claremont in 1729. An engraving by Rocque and Benazech of 1754 shows the amphitheatre with the same number of upper and lower terraces but without the polygonal banks at each side. A plain rectangular stretch of water replaces the circular pond (Willis, Charles Bridgeman, pl. 31). Stephen Switzer had knowledge of Bridgeman's original design for he incorporated this amphitheatre plan at the head of a stepped cascade and a large, cruciform canal in an idealised engraved plan published in An Introduction to a General System of Hydrostaticks and Hydraulicks (1729), pl. 37 (Willis, pl. 32a).The technique of graduated shading from dark to light for downward-sloping banks was used by Henry Wise and is a standard convention on garden plans in this period (see Wise's plans for Buckingham House and the Maestricht Garden at Windsor Castle; SM volume 111/42 and 45).
Literature
P. Willis, Charles Bridgeman and the English Landscape Garden, 2002, pp. 178 and 427, pl. 32b.
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