[27] Alternative design for the new Gallery range

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Public buildings
  - London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, Southwark for the Governors of Dulwich College, 1811-1813 (108)
    - Three further alternative designs, May 1811 (6)

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Reference number

SM 65/4/20

Purpose

[27] Alternative design for the new Gallery range

Aspect

West elevation of the Gallery entrance front with almshouses

Scale

bar scale of 1/9 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Dulwich College

Signed and dated

May 1811 datable to 27^th May 1811 (only date to mention drawing elevation in the day book for May, after the meeting on 16^th May)

Medium and dimensions

Pen, warm sepia, yellow ochre, blue and black washes, watercolour technique, shaded, partly pricked for transfer, within eight-ruled pen and sepia and black wash border on wove paper (335 x 528)

Hand

George Allen Underwood (only pupil recorded drawing elevations in the Day Book entries for May)

Watermark

Ruse & Turners 1805

Notes

This drawing and SM 54/4/38 correspond with SM 65/4/41 for design No. 7, with the Gallery as a single-storey range housing the Gallery with the almshouses running along the entire length of the west front. The almshouses were to consist of two rooms for each of five almswomen, three rooms for the matron, and kitchens and dining rooms. In the plan the straight arcade connected to the centre of the north and south ends is drawn, and additional projecting end bays on the west side have been added in pencil.

The elevation of the entrance front is close to the preliminary design, SM 54/4/28, with the projecting entrance porch crowned with a pediment but without the attic storey. There is the addition of two arched recesses which lead to entrance lobbies to the almshouses. This recessed motif is repeated on later designs for the windows and Gallery entrance.

The building now has a fifteen-bay front with wider end bays of three windows across and single flanking pilasters, to accomodate the additional almshouses. The balustrade and antefix continue to be employed along the flat skyline.

Literature

F. Nevola, Soane's favourite subject: the story of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2000, pp. 39 & 179

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).