Lot Essay
This watercolour of the Breakfast Room at Lincoln's Inn Fields formed the basis for Plate XXIX in Soane's Description of the House and Museum on the North Side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Residence of Sir John Soane, 1835 (150 copies privately printed). The house, next door to Soane's first home, was taken over from a tenant and remodelled in 1812-13. During the next twenty years Soane was almost constantly at work altering and improving the interior, and evolving what came to be his private museum demonstrating the history and theories of architecture. Karl Friedrich Schinkel visited the house in 1826 "Like all private houses in London this house is small, but it contains a great number of casts, fragments of antique statues and buildings, vases, sarcophagi, little panels and bronzes, all exhibited in the most ingenious way, in the smallest of spaces lit from above and the side, often only 3 ft wide" (ed. David Bindman and Gottfried Reimann, Karl Friedrich Schinkel: the English Journey, London, 1993, p. 114).
Soane's Description of 1835 echoes Schinkel's impression of clever architectural tricks: "In the centre rises a spherical ceiling, springing from four segmental arches, supported by the same number of pilasters, forming a rich canopy. The spandrels of the dome and the soffits of the arches are decorated with a number of mirrors. In the dome is an octangular lantern-light, enriched with eight scriptural subjects in painted glass. At the north and south ends of the room are skylights, which diffuse strong lights over several architectural and other works decorated the walls. The views from this room into the Monument Court and into the Museum, the mirrors in the ceiling, and the looking-glasses, combined with the variety of outline and general arrangement in the design and decoration of this limited space, present a succession of those fanciful effects which constitute the poetry of architecture".
The items shown in the illustration are as follows: the arch-topped painting is Henry Howard's The Contention of Oberon and Titania (Midsummer Night's Dream, commissioned by Soane for 250 guineas and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1832); each side are designs by Soane for the House of Lords; beneath is Rysbrack's terracotta model for the marble panel on the Duke of Marlborough's tomb at Blenheim. In the glass case is a Turkish pistol with fictitious Napoleonic associations, of which Soane gives a full account in the Description; this is flanked by portraits of Napoleon. Below, in a niche between two circular casts, is a clock by the great Benjamin Vulliamy, who was patronised by George IV.
Richardson was Soane's pupil and assistant, who made a number of interior views of his master's London house, 1825-35. He later went on to illustrate and publish a series of volumes on old English architecture
Soane's Description of 1835 echoes Schinkel's impression of clever architectural tricks: "In the centre rises a spherical ceiling, springing from four segmental arches, supported by the same number of pilasters, forming a rich canopy. The spandrels of the dome and the soffits of the arches are decorated with a number of mirrors. In the dome is an octangular lantern-light, enriched with eight scriptural subjects in painted glass. At the north and south ends of the room are skylights, which diffuse strong lights over several architectural and other works decorated the walls. The views from this room into the Monument Court and into the Museum, the mirrors in the ceiling, and the looking-glasses, combined with the variety of outline and general arrangement in the design and decoration of this limited space, present a succession of those fanciful effects which constitute the poetry of architecture".
The items shown in the illustration are as follows: the arch-topped painting is Henry Howard's The Contention of Oberon and Titania (Midsummer Night's Dream, commissioned by Soane for 250 guineas and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1832); each side are designs by Soane for the House of Lords; beneath is Rysbrack's terracotta model for the marble panel on the Duke of Marlborough's tomb at Blenheim. In the glass case is a Turkish pistol with fictitious Napoleonic associations, of which Soane gives a full account in the Description; this is flanked by portraits of Napoleon. Below, in a niche between two circular casts, is a clock by the great Benjamin Vulliamy, who was patronised by George IV.
Richardson was Soane's pupil and assistant, who made a number of interior views of his master's London house, 1825-35. He later went on to illustrate and publish a series of volumes on old English architecture