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  • image SM volume 42/170
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Reference number

SM volume 42/170

Purpose

[66] Study for four-bay scheme with clerestory lunettes, December 1791

Aspect

Plan of one bay, longitudinal sections looking east, transverse section looking north

Scale

1/10 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

(pencil, added later by Bailey) (1st idea Bank Stock Office)

Signed and dated

  • (Soane, pencil) Decr 11, 1791

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen, hatching, cross hatching, pricked for transfer on laid secretary paper with two fold marks (203 x 320)

Hand

George Dance (1741-1825)

Watermark

Crowned GR, and part of W

Notes

The studies on this drawing correlate with SM archive 14/80/1 and SM volume 42/173. The lower top-lit north end containing a fireplace with its flue running to the back wall is shown at the left of the longitudinal section. The two longitudinal sections at the top of the drawing show alternatives for vaulting and ornamenting the side arches. The more finished version on the left shows semicircular arches with a decorated archivolt. On the right, an alternative shows lower segmental arches flanked by thinly decorated pilasters running through the level of the clerestory, giving the elevation a more pronounced, continuous verticality.

In the transverse section, the flat-topped pitched roof is supported by stepped buttressing (as in SM archive 14/80/1) and the window at the north end is a fan-light similar to the side lunettes (instead of the thermal window in SM archive 14/80/1). A plan shows cross-vaulting over the centre-aisle.

The drawing is made freehand but with the aid of a compass for the semicircular arches and so is not described as 'rough'. The inscriptions in Soane's hand indicate that he received it in Barnet, north of London, on Sunday 11 December 1791, during the five-day period from 8 to 12 December the Day Book records his absence from home.

Literature

J. Lever, Catalogue of the drawings of George Dance the Younger (1741-1825) ... from the collection of Sir John Soane's Museum, 2003, p. 353
J. Summerson, 'Soane: the man and the style', John Soane, 1983, pp. 11-13, fig. 5
J. Summerson, 'The evolution of Soane's Bank Stock Office in the Bank of England', The unromantic castle, 1990, p. 148-149, ill. 127

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).