[8] Copy of plan of ground floor 'B' and (verso) of first floor

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Town houses
  - Reading, Berkshire: Friar Street, house for Lancelot Austwick, 1796 (32)
    - Designs made March 1796 (12)

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Reference number

SM 2/7A/15

Purpose

[8] Copy of plan of ground floor 'B' and (verso) of first floor

Aspect

Plan of the Ground Floor (verso) Plan of the Frst Floor

Scale

bar scale of 1/6 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, Lancelot Austwick Esq, rooms labelled: Parlor, Office, Entrance, China Closet, Pantry, Kitchen, Washouse / and / Scullery and dimensions given (verso) Chamber (five times), Ladies Sitting Room, Water / Closet and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

Robert Smirke (verso) Robert Smirke see note under Hand

Medium and dimensions

Pen and sepia washes, added pencil, with quadruple ruled and sepia wash border on laid paper (525 x 430) (verso) pen, sepia and Indian red washes

Hand

The 'signature' suggests that the drawing was made by Robert Smirke (1780 - 1867), pupil May 1796 - January 1797. However, Smirke did not enter the office until May 1796 and this drawing is datable to March 1796. Moreover, he was only 16 years old and the drawing is by a mature and confident hand. Then again, pupils and asistants were not permitted to sign drawings. There are other drawings 'signed' Robert Smirke and it is thought that these are by a later ? curatorial hand seeking to identify those drawings thought to be made by Smirke - the most successful of Soane's former pupils.
The office Day Book covering March 1796 is missing. Entries for April and May 1796 name Good, Seward, Provis and Laing as making drawings for Mr Austwick; Robert Smirke is not named.

Watermark

J Larking and fleur de lis above cartouche with bar and below, GR

Notes

There are some very rough pencil cancellations against the back rooms.

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).