Tracing of preliminary design

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- 'Original Sketches / Miscellaneous / Architectural / Subjects': album with 195 drawings by Soane, Dance, Holland and others, dated c.1757 to 1818 (volume 42)
  - Volume 42/51: Henry Holland (1745-1806): Ceiling for the library at Claremont House, near Esher, Surrey for 1st Lord Clive, c. 1771-4

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Reference number

SM volume 42/51

Purpose

Tracing of preliminary design

Aspect

Quarter-plan showing a central patera with acanthus ornament encircled by overlapping paterae each containing a portrait medallion and wreath, and details of ornament including: palmette in scrolled heart band, arcaded band, paterae and calyx band labelled 'A',cyma reversa with acanthus labelled 'B', ovolo with egg and dart and bead labelled 'D'

Scale

to various scales

Inscribed

Library Ciel^g/ Claremont and A (twice), B (twice), C and D

Signed and dated

datable to c. 1771-4

Medium and dimensions

Pen on tracing paper (161 x 187)

Hand

traced by Soane, Henry Holland office

Notes

The Soane Museum's Adam Collection includes a volume (V) of ceiling designs of which No. 53 is Henry Holland's complete plan for a 'Ceiling to Library Claremont' with a note 'the Medallions to be the English Poets'. The tracing catalogued here and the drawing V/53 show the same design though the tracing is to a slightly larger scale and includes details of mouldings. Stroud, Holland, 1966, fig. 87 shows a photograph of the library and its rectangular ceiling which employs employs a great number of portrait medallions. The tracing catalogued here is evidently a related preliminary design.Several other non-Adam drawings in Volume V suggest that they were probably added by Soane.

Literature

C.Rowell, '"That delightful and magnificent Villa", Clive of India's Claremont and its collections', Apollo,CLIII, April 2001, fig.2 and see below

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).