Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [7] Final design exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1779
  • image SM 45/1/35

Reference number

SM 45/1/35

Purpose

[7] Final design exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1779

Aspect

Elliptical plan with twin curved wings

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

DESIGN FOR A BRITISH (and) SENATE HOVSE (within in two tablet-like labels, in sans serif (sic) lettering)

Medium and dimensions

Pen, cream background wash, and grey wash, pencil within black triple ruled and wash border, on laid paper, backed (591 x 940) The position of the inscribed labels suggest that the drawing was to be viewed in a landscape format though, conventionally, it would be read vertically so that the entrance is at the bottom of the sheet

Hand

Unidentified ? Italian hand

Watermark

J Honig & Zoonen and cartouche with beehive

Notes

A comparison with SM 45/1/13 recto by Dance shows that Soane followed it closely, adopting the larger curved wings rather than the short straight ones.

The verso is inscribed (red pen, twice) No 52 6 Lect. 1819 and (pencil) 6th Lecture 1817, 6th Lecture 1819 No 60, Lect 2 No 19 1819, 21 Lect 2nd 1832 and (pen) 50. Thus the drawing was re-used as a lecture drawing.The drawing was exhibited at the Royal Academy 1779, No. 308 'Plan, elevation, and section of a British Senate House'.

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).