The three surviving sketch/notebooks document only a small part of a tour which began on 18 March 1778 and ended in late June 1780. A notebook with some sketches is dated December 1778 to April and July 1779 (SM volume 164). A sketchbook with notes was mostly used from January to March 1779 (SM volume 39). Finally, there is a notebook with some sketches mostly dated from April to June 1780 (SM volume 162). Thus only nine out of the twenty-eight months that Soane spent abroad are accounted for - some of them very scantily. Of other records made on Soane's tour, there are copies of measured drawings of two buildings in Sicily, but nothing for buildings in Malta, and for France there is only a separate account of the Pont de Neuilly transcribed in 1783 from a now-lost document. Soane's only encounters with antique Greek architecture were at Paestum, recorded in his sketchbook (SM volume 39), and (it is presumed) in Sicily. See also (in Drawings catalogue): Soane in Italy: measured drawings made or copied, 1778-80 and Soane's architectural education including theoretical designs made for the Royal Academy Schools, for exhibition at the Royal Academy, 1770-80 and in Italy: 1778-1780

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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