[4] Design in an Ionic style and 82 feet wide

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Soane's architectural education: Royal Academy and Italy including measured drawings: 1770-1780
  - Soane's architectural education including theoretical designs made for the Royal Academy Schools and for exhibition at the Royal Academy, 1770-80, and in Italy, 1778-80
    - Alternative designs, and record drawing, for a (hunting) casino, c. 1780 (4)

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Reference number

SM 45/1/24

Purpose

[4] Design in an Ionic style and 82 feet wide

Aspect

Back elevation of five-bay casino with a tall window (within a semicircular headed blank arch) at each end and, in the centre, a bowed portico or loggia with a door with flanking windows set on a convex plan and framed by four detached Ionic columns; part-wall plan of the bow fronted by columns

Scale

bar scale of 1/5in to 1ft

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, green, light red washes, shaded, pencil within single ruled and burn umber wash border on laid paper (481 x 709)

Hand

Soane, trees by another hand?

Watermark

J Whatman, fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche with GR below

Notes

Previously catalogued (Concise Catalogue) as a 'casino' this has been prefered to 'villa' though 82 feet seems overly large for what is meant to be a compact building. However, the design does relate to Soane's other designs for casinos and, judging by the lack of windows, the rooms may have been large but few in number. Soane set his unfinished elevation in a hilly Italian landscape with a variety of trees including: Lombardy poplars, cypress, stone pine and a palm tree (probably brushed-in by another hand) and there is a glimpse of an Italianate farm building; the sky is not washed in. As has been said, the building is 82 feet wide and there is no indication of a basement, nor are there any mezzanine windows to interrupt the calm and monumental front with the door and main windows of equal width (five feet) and height (10 feet). The order is Ionic and between the columns and above the three centre openings are large roundels, two decorated with festoons. Soane may have intended this unfinished drawing to be among the five that he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1781. A little later, it may have been a source for one of his designs for Tendring Hall, 1784.

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