282 x 212 mm, paperback, 48 pages, full colour
PRICE: £12.95
ISBN: 978 0 9549041 6 6
“In England more than in any other country, every man would fain to be his own architect”, remarked the Swiss J.A. Rouquet in 1755. He was referring to a unique European situation, where a growing number of English gentlemen, having found inspiration in architectural books and Continental travel, were turning their hands to design.
This exhibition and catalogue celebrates the most gifted, inventive and eccentric amateurs of the 18th and early 19th centuries with a selection of drawings, engravings and portraits gathered from Soane's collection and other museums, archives and private houses around the country. Selected for this exhibition include a number of great personalities: Ada Augusta Byron, Lady Lovelace, only daughter of the poet and architect of Ashley Combe, a romantic rambling antique Roman retreat on a Somerset cliff top; or the fabulous Sarah Losh, whose church, cemetery, and mausoleum at Wreay in Cumbria raise her to the heights of genius and invention.
This second publication in the series of small picture books on individual works of art in Sir John Soane's Museum features the anonymous North Italian Album, a unique work of the Italian Renaissance - 68 highly coloured designs on vellum for architecture, furniture, stage sets and decorative objects. More
In the library of Sir John Soane’s remarkable house at 13, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, several volumes of Italian architectural drawings of the 16th and 17th centuries have remained until today one of London’s hidden treasures. They have never been catalogued before in detail. More
The castle-style designs and picturesque landscape fantasies of Robert Adam are a much negelected aspect of his work. These paintings and sketches give a vivid scense of the beauty and allure of the landscapes and architecturally by which Adam was romantically fascinated, and which he recreated in some of his most significant commissions - or else on paper. More
Although the life of George Scharf has not been well documented, he has left a remarkable legacy of drawings, watercolours and lithographs, which, in a most vivid and detailed manner, describe the life of London in the first half of the 19th Century. In many ways, his work can be compared to that of other great chronicler of early Victorian London – Charles Dickens. The characters that populate The Pickwick Papers or Little Dorrit can all be glimpsed in Scharf’s sketches and prints. More