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Soane and Hardwick in Rome: a Neo-Classical partnership

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Extract

The early lives of John Soane (1753–1837) and Thomas Hardwick (1752–1829) ran remarkably parallel courses. Both could claim similar family backgrounds in the building trade: Soane's father was a humble Berkshire bricklayer, while Hardwick's progressed from the practice of mason to that of self-styled architect at New Brentford, Middlesex. Both young men entered prominent architectural offices of the day around the same time, 1767: Sir William Chambers's in the case of Hardwick, George Dance the Younger's, and subsequently Henry Holland's, in the case of Soane. Both also enrolled among the first students in architecture at the newly founded Royal Academy of Arts. Soane and Hardwick, in that institution's cramped quarters at Old Somerset House, must have known one another, even though there is no evidence that they were on particularly friendly terms.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1972

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References

Notes

1 I would like to thank Sir John Summerson and Mr John Harris, Curators of Sir John Soane's Museum and the RIBA Drawings Collection respectively, for the assistance which they and their staffs have afforded me. The illustrations are reproduced by kind permission of the RIBA and the Trustees of Sir John Soane's Museum (photographs by R. B. Fleming in the SM and VA and by Lionel Bell in the RIBA). My discussion of all Hardwick's Italian loose drawings will appear in a future volume of the Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the RIBA.

2 Bolton, A. T., The Portrait of Sir John Soane (1927), 3.Google Scholar

3 Colvin, H. M., A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects 1660–1840 (1954), 264.Google Scholar

4 For Hardwick's apprenticeship, see Harris, J., Sir William Chambers (1970), 11 n.41.Google Scholar Soane, related his entry into Dance's office in his autobiographical Memoirs of the Professional Life of an Architect between the Years 1768 and 1835 (1835), 11 Google Scholar. In light of other evidence, the date Soane supplied of 1768 seems a year too late (see Bolton, , Portrait, 3 Google Scholar).

5 Hardwick entered in 1769, Soane two years later. See Hutchison, S. C., ‘The Royal Academy Schools, 1768–1830’, Walpole Society xxxviii (1960-62), 134, 137, respectively.Google Scholar

6 Soane recorded his salary from Holland, Henry in Description of the House and Museum on the North Side of Lincoln's Inn Fields (1830), 40 Google Scholar. The burial of ‘Jn° Soan bricklayer’ on 1 May 1768 is recorded in the parish registers of Goring-on- Thames, Oxfordshire.

7 RA, General Assembly Minutes i, 108110.Google Scholar

8 Paul Oppé, A. (ed.), ‘Memoirs of Thomas Jones’, Walpole Society xxxii (1946–48), 4041.Google Scholar The painter Thomas Jones noted meeting Hardwick in Paris on 20 October 1776 and wrote also of their joint departure from that city on 24 October for Italy. They arrived at Rome just over two months later.

9 BM, ‘Farington Diary Typescript’ i, 266 (entry for 21 December 1794).Google Scholar

10 RA, General Assembly Minutes i, 118 (entry for 10 December 1777)Google Scholar.

11 SM, Soane Notebook Transcript xiii (1829–31), 91 (entry for 18 March 1831).Google Scholar This was a date which Soane in his later years celebrated with almost religious reverence.

12 SM, Correspondence Cupboard 2, division xiv, B(1)Google Scholar, item 1b, letter from Rome of 1 August 1778 to Henry Wood the carver. Cf. Bolton, , Portrait, 16.Google Scholar

13 ibid.

14 Hardwick's notebook records his departure 18 April and his return (RIBA, Hl/4, f. 1 recto & 25 verso).

15 On the English coffee house see Ford, Brinsley, ‘The Letters of Jonathan Skelton’, Walpole Society xxxvi (1956-58), 38, n.16.Google Scholar

16 Soane, John, Designs for Public and Private Buildings (1832), 39.Google Scholar This is an expanded, extra-illustrated and privately printed version of the 1828 published edition. The only copies I know of are in the SM. Surely Soane meant here a rivalry between Holland and Chambers. The former, along with Lancelot ‘Capability' Brown had taken the Claremont Park commission away from Chambers in 1769. See Stroud, D., Henry Holland His Life and Architecture (1966), 32.Google Scholar

17 On Henderson's career consult Lindsay, I. G., Georgian Edinburgh (Edinburgh 1948), 36.Google Scholar I am indebted to Mr Brinsley Ford for this information. For more recent work on Henderson see Youngson, A. J., The Making of Classical Edinburgh (Edinburgh 1966), 62, 65.Google Scholar

18 Oppé, , ‘Memoirs Jones’, 68 Google Scholar, speaks of Henderson and Hardwick as being together early in 1778.

19 Soane, , Designs Public and Private 1832, 39 Google Scholar and Memoirs, idem, 15.

20 The building history with passing mention of Soane is given by Rankin, P., Country Life cl (1971), 9497, 154–157.Google Scholar

21 Soane had left London in Brettingham's company for Rome ( SM, Soane Notebook Transcripts vii, 1809–10, 39 Google Scholar).

22 Childe-Pemberton, William Shakespeare, The Earl Bishop (2 vols 1925), i, 200216.Google Scholar

23 Oppé, , ‘Memoirs Jones’, 79 (entry for 27 September 1778), recording the travellers’ arrival in Naples.Google Scholar

24 ibid., 81.

25 SM, Correspondence Cupboard 1, division i, B(13), item 2 (letter from Robert Furze Brettingham to Soane in Naples dated from Rome 22 December 1778). The letter mentions ‘that Room you designed for Ld H[ervey]…’ (cf. Bolton, , Portrait, 1920 Google Scholar).

26 Oppé, , ‘Memoirs Jones’, 89.Google Scholar

27 ibid., 64–65.

28 Lees-Milne, J., Earls of Creation (1962), 227, 230Google Scholar, speaks of one Signor Giacomo who was architectural tutor and supplier of views to Thomas Coke, first Earl of Leicester, on his Roman sojourn in 1714 and 1717. Presuming Giacomo to be a surname rather than a Christian name, Hardwick's companion could be the son or grandson of Coke's tutor.

29 SM, Soane's MS notebook, ‘Notes Italy’, 328.Google Scholar This and more unpublished information concerning Soane's stay abroad has been incorporated into my doctoral thesis on his youth.

30 Dance wrote of his cast to his father (RIBA Library, Dance Letter Book, letters of 4 October and 2 November 1760). Giovanni Battista Piranesi marvelled to see the young Englishman on scaffolding placed around the three shafts of the Castor and Pollux Temple in the Campo Vaccino (letter to Robert Mylne from Rome 11 November 1760. Quoted in Gotch, C., ‘The Missing Years of Robert Mylne’, Architectural Review cx, 1951, pt2, 182 Google Scholar). The original transcription is in RIBA Library. See also Stroud, D., George Dance, Architect, 1741–1825 (1971), 6465.Google Scholar

31 At the time of an investigation of the ruins of the supposed Villa of Lucullus near Terracina on Christmas Day 1778, Soane measured for the Bishop of Derry what they both thought to be a semicircular dining triclinium (SM, Soane's MS notebook, ‘Italian Sketches and Memoranda’, 191). In 1780 Soane was adopting the triclinium for use as a dining-room in a revised plan he prepared for Derry's mansion, the Downhill (SM, Drawer 45, set 1, item 25).

32 George Dance, for example, wrote to his father that Palladio's survey of the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli was ‘Very defective’ (RIBA Library, Dance Letter Book, letter from Rome, 30 October 1762). See Stroud, , Dance, p. 70.Google Scholar We also know of Robert Adam's scheme in 1755 to edit in a new version the famous survey of the Roman ruins by Desgodtetz, Antoine, Les Edifices antiques de Rome (Paris 1682).Google Scholar See Fleming, J., Robert Adam and his Circle (1962), 170171.Google Scholar

33 de Montaiglon, A. & Guiffrey, J. (ed.), Correspondance des Directeurs de l'Académie de France à Rome (18 vols Paris 1887–1912), xiv, 38 Google Scholar (letter from Joseph-Marie Vien to the Marquis d'Angivilier from Rome, 9 August 1780, describes the recent near-fatal accident of the architectural student, Étienne Deseine).

34 To supplement Soane's information, Hardwick himself copied down in a notebook the ‘Altezza del Capitelle di Tempio di Vesta’ (RIBA, Hl/2, f. 153 58 recto).

35 Byers's reconstruction of the Baths of Caracalla, Diocletian and Titus, each clearly marked ‘da Sigr Byers Copia’, are inserted in RIBA, Hardwick Album vii, 53, 52 verso & 52 recto, respectively. The small versions were expanded respectively into the following Hardwick loose sheets: RIBA, E3/32, 33, 31.

36 On Byers, see Fleming, J., ‘Some Roman Cicerones, and Artist-Dealers’, The Connoisseur Year Book (1959), 2427.Google Scholar

37 BM, ‘Farington Diary Typescriptiv, 928 (entry for 10 February 1797).Google Scholar The informant was Farington's friend Dance.

38 Harris, J., ‘Sir William Chambers and his Parisian Album’, Architectural History vi (1963), 55.Google Scholar Also idem, Chambers, 23–24.

39 The phrase I have quoted is in Soane's shaky handwriting on a nineteenth-century transcript of the letter (SM, Correspondence Cupboard 1, division i, C(7), item 2). Soane's story about receiving a copy from Chambers for his own use is related in Memoirs, 12. Soane's copy does not survive, but somehow he obtained the original to Stevens, probably from the latter's widow in Rome. It is item 1 in the above cited reference. For full, if inaccurate, citations of the letter, see Bolton, , Portrait, 1012 Google Scholar, or Harris, , Chambers, 2122.Google Scholar

40 See my previous note. Chambers went on to recommend works by the moderns, Nicola Salvi and Piranesi.

41 SirSummerson, John, Architecture in Britain 1530–1830 (1963), 243 Google Scholar, succinctly defines Neo-Classicism in these terms. Idem, Sir John Soane (1952), 16, mentions Soane's stylistic allegiance to Chambers in the former's first book, Designs in Architecture (1778).

42 For a period in which Soane produced designs for a British Senate House, a Mausoleum to the Memory of the Earl of Chatham and a Royal Palace, there is no comparable original work at all by Hardwick.

43 See Fleming, Adam; Stroud, Dance.

44 For Harrison's activities in Rome, especially his entry into architectural competitions, see Mordaunt Crook, J., Country Life cxlix (1971), 10891090.Google Scholar Vying for academic prizes and diplomas abroad is another apsect of the architectural Grand Tour to become intensified in the Neo-Classical period.

45 Harris, , Chambers, 191, enumerates some of these.Google Scholar

46 See my note 40.

47 On associating with future clients, see the opinions of Chambers ( Harris, , Chambers, 18 Google Scholar) or Nathaniel Dance writing to his father from Rome (quoted by Fleming, , Adam, 245 Google Scholar). Fleming, , op. cit., 247, 257Google Scholar, tells us of Adam's practice of soliciting employment with his enticing Italian drawings.