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  • image Image 1 for SM (1) volume 66/15 (2) 71/3/11 (3) volume 66/16 (4) 71/3/14 (5) 71/3/15 (6) 71/3/13 (7) 71/3/12
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  • image Image 1 for SM (1) volume 66/15 (2) 71/3/11 (3) volume 66/16 (4) 71/3/14 (5) 71/3/15 (6) 71/3/13 (7) 71/3/12
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Reference number

SM (1) volume 66/15 (2) 71/3/11 (3) volume 66/16 (4) 71/3/14 (5) 71/3/15 (6) 71/3/13 (7) 71/3/12

Purpose

Presentation drawings, July 1791 (7)

Aspect

1 The Plan of the Principal Floor 2 The Plan of the Mezzanine Floor (verso, feint pencil, unrelated section) 3 The Plan of / the Picture Gallery and Museum 4 The Sections and Interior View / of the Great Lecture Room and Music Room 5 Plan and The Sections of the Great Lecture Room and Music Room with Interior View of the Great Lecture Room and Music Room and two end elevations/sections 6 The Plan and Section of One Side of the Proposed Museum (to a larger scale and more elaborately finished than drawing 5) 7 The Sections of the Picture Gallery, The Ceiling of the Picture Gallery, The Interior View of the Picture Gallery and two elevations/sections of the end walls

Scale

(2) bar scale of 2/11 inch to 1 foot (drawings 1 and 3: to the same scale) (4-6) bar scales of 2/9 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

1 as above, The University of Cambridge, rooms labelled: The Porters Lodge, Closet to Library, The Staircase / and Vestibule, The Registry (twice), The Hall, The Lecture Room / and / Library, The Great Lecture Room / and / Music Room and dimensions of heights given (the principal rooms are 21 feet high) 2 as above, The University of Cambridge, rooms and voids labelled: Staircase to / Gallery / and Roof / &c, Water Closet, The Great Staircase, Chamber (twice), The upper part of / the Library, The upper part of / the Hall, The upper part of / the Great Lecture Room and Music Room 3 as above, The University of Cambridge, rooms labelled: The Picture Gallery, The Museum 4 as above 5 as above 6 as above, labelled: The Section of One Side of the Museum and The Plan of the Museum and above three cases: The Natural History of Ireland, The Natural History of England and The Natural History of Scotland 7 as above

Signed and dated

  • (1-7) Copy John Soane Archt July 1791

Medium and dimensions

(1) Pen, black and sepia washes with cut-down border (lower edge) on laid paper (492 x 698) (2) pen and sepia washes on laid paper (542 x 755) (3) pen and sepia washes with cut-down border (lower edge and LHS) on laid paper (492 x 698) (4) pen, sepia, burnt umber, green and yellow washes on laid paper (955 x 640) (5) pen, sepia, black and coloured washes on laid paper (637 x 950) (6) pen, black, sepia and coloured washes on laid paper (632 x 950) (7) pen, sepia, black and coloured washes on laid paper (640 x 950) (1-7) with quadruple-ruled and raw umber wash border (1 and 3 cut-down) and with one fold mark

Hand

Thomas Chawner (1774-1851, pupil 1788-94)

Watermark

(1-3) Portal & Bridges, fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche and GR below (4-7) J Whatman

Notes

The design is for a nine by five bay building with a front entrance into a hall and thence to the lecture room / library and large lecture room / music room of the ground floor. A side entrance takes the visitor upstairs to the museum and picture gallery via a geometric stair on a D-plan. Drawings 4 and 5 are alternative designs for the Great Lecture Room and Music Room. Both are of the same dimensions but with the seating arranged differently. Drawing 5 has windows on three sides and is shown as a lecture room. Drawing 4 has windows on two sides and is shown as a theatre with an orchestra pit. The interior architecture differs in that, for example, drawing 4 (theatre) has a vaulted ceiling and drawing 15 (lecture theatre) a canopy (or handkerchief) ceiling.

The room labelled 'Museum' (drawing 6) has a plan and form reminiscent of an unexecuted design by Soane (and/or George Dance) for the picture gallery (sic) at Fonthill Splendens, 1787 (q.v.). The long narrow plan that was unavoidable at Fonthill was here more apt for museum objects. George Dance's executed design for the Common Council Chamber of the Guildhall, London of 1777-8, included a top-lit pendentive or canopy dome (in which the dome and the pendentives are part of the same sphere) similar to the Fonthill example though circular rather than elliptical on plan. The three lanterns of the Senate scheme are elliptical on plan but with flat roofs rather than the conical lanterns set on drums of the Fonthill example. The first built example of a related design was the fine canopy dome with lantern in the Yellow Drawing Room at Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire, 1790-1 (q.v.).

For the picture gallery design (drawing 7), the young draughtsman has enthusiastically filled the frames with a great many joyous figures with flying draperies (or none at all) depicting various scenes from the Classics including the Rape of Europa.

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.

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