[30] Accepted design for the Gallery and almshouse range, as if viewed from Gallery Road, 10 July 1811

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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)
    - Design approved on 12 July 1811 (5)

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Reference number

SM 65/4/33

Purpose

[30] Accepted design for the Gallery and almshouse range, as if viewed from Gallery Road, 10 July 1811

Aspect

Plan of the upper story

Scale

bar scale of 1/9 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, Dulwich College, (Soane) Lead flats (four times), upper part of the Picture Gallery, (Soane) Mausoleum, Slated roof, Staircase (twice), Dulwich College, (written later in Soane's hand) at Dulwich 12 July 1811 / Plan appr[ove]^d, some dimensions given

Signed and dated

Lincolns Inn Fields / 10 July 1811

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, raw umber and rose pink washes, partly pricked for transfer, within seven-ruled pen, sepia and black wash border on wove paper (330 x 523)

Hand

George Bailey (1792-1860, pupil and Soane office assistant 1806-1837, curator 1837-1860) or John Buxton (pupil 1809-1814) (both pupils recorded drawing plans for Dulwich in the Day Book entry for 10 July 1811) (2) pencil additions by Soane and (verso) Soane

Notes

The main difference between this plan and SM 65/4/34 when compraed to the previous plan (SM 65/4/37) is that the end bays of the almshouse extending to the west are wider and they are two storeys high, as can be seen by the addition of a staircase. The gallery rooms are a sequence of cubes and double cubes. Waterfield states 'the carefully proportioned shape... follows the Palladian tradition in British architecure' (Soane and After: The Architecture of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1987, pp. 13). It is a symmetrical layout with the five central bays and projecting end bays on either side. SM 65/4/34 includes two parallel entrances into porches for the almshouses, previously illustrated in the elevation of SM 65/4/20.

The plan of SM 65/4/34 shows that as domestic spaces the almshouses are to be heated by fireplaces, as indicated by the niches in the wall. Whereas the Gallery was to be heated by a central steam heating system shown by flues embedded within the wall.

The dimensions of the Galleries were clearly discussed during the meeting judging by all the corrections made on SM 65/4/34 in pencil. The dimensions written in ink are 18 feet by 22 feet, 40 feet by 21.9 feet, 20 feet by 6 inches square. These were crossed out in pencil and replaced with the two large galleries marked 40 feet by 20 feet and the middle and end galleries marked 20 feet by 9 inches square. These revised dimensions correspond exactly with those built. The optimum length is also adjusted from 144. 6 feet to 148.3 feet with an addition of 3.9 feet making the length 152 feet, which is just two feet short of the length of the Gallery built.

The plans are drawn from a different angle than the previous designs. All of the other drawings have been drawn as if viewed from College Road, whereas the Gallery is now drawn as if seen from Gallery Road. So north is to the left of the drawing rather than to the right.

Literature

F. Nevola, Soane's favourite subject: the story of Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2000, pp. 43 & 180

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).