First Principles and Ancient Errors: Soane at Dulwich

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First Principles and Ancient Errors: Soane at DulwichAuthor(s): Andrew BallantyneSource: Architectural History, Vol. 37 (1994), pp. 96-111Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568637 .Accessed: 13/06/2014 10:26

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First principles and ancient

errors: Soane at Dulwich by ANDREW BALLANTYNE

In 1811 the authorities at Dulwich College commissioned from Sir John Soane an extraordinary combination of a burial chamber, almshouses, and art gallery;1 and Soane responded with one of his most inventive designs, a work with an architectonic presence much greater than its modest size and cost would imply (Figs i and 2). The

building escapes conventional stylistic categories, its classicism having overtones of Gothic, 'primitive', and even Egyptian architecture. Soane's commitment to classicism is not in doubt, but my aim is to show that Soane's classicism at Dulwich, re-invented from first principles, was enriched by taking ideas from outside classicism, especially from the Gothic; and also to show how Soane associated these ideas with one another. This is made possible by examining the notes for and texts of the lectures which he delivered at the Royal Academy from I809, an enterprise which involved Soane reading and re-reading books from his library (which remains intact) and attempting to codify his ideas about architecture into a set of principles which could be taught. Having articulated these principles he was able more clearly from this time creatively to embody them in architecture. His building at Dulwich offers a rare chance to relate a great architect's built work to elements in the thinking which brought it into being.

Soane's view of the broad historical context for his work is very clear from the lectures. He thought that ancient Greek and Roman civilization belonged to one enlightened age, and modern civilization since the Renaissance to another: The rise, progress, and meridian splendour of Architecture, and likewise its decline until the time of Diocletian, having been traced in the preceding Discourses, I shall now briefly show its further declension, from the accession of Constantine, until all knowledge of this noble Art, as perfected by the Greeks, and sometimes successfully imitated by the Romans, was completely obscured.2

Before Greek civilization there had been a primitive era, and in the 'Middle Ages' between civilizations, architecture was in so degraded a state that it could be considered primitive, all knowledge of the Greeks' 'perfect' architecture having been 'completely obscured'. This interpretation would have seemed wrong (or at best over-simplified) to antiquaries among Soane's contemporaries who were taking a serious scholarly interest in medieval architecture, which Soane consigned to a dark age of ignorance and superstition. He regretted that 'the Taste for Grecian architecture had not prevaild when the large Gothic buildings were erected',3 and he detailed the sacking of classical temples by Christians, entertaining no high opinion of the faithful:


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The Temple of Venus atJerusalem was likewise destroyed, it being supposed that our Saviour had been buried under that very spot; and on that sacred ground ... a magnificent Church was erected. The drawings of this edifice ... show the degraded state of the arts at that period. The church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, erected by Justinian about the middle of the sixth century, is another example of the rapid decline of Architecture and the arts connected therewith. The plan of this celebrated structure is, however, grandly conceived, although the execution and taste in the finishing is very defective .... .4

Soane did however endorse the eclectic picturesque principle of congruence between a building and its setting, in connection with Gothic architecture: In grand, romantic, mountainous parts of the country, enriched with torrents, lakes, and rivers, castellated Mansions ... may bring back the pleasing recollections of ancient times, and make the spectator feel the pleasures of concordance, from the similarity of the emotions produced by the objects.5

Soane saw the association of ideas in a landscape as important, and the congruence of trains of thought as an effective source of pleasure. In finding the congruence in the trains of thought, rather than in the forms of the objects being contemplated, Soane was following Richard Payne Knight's ideas as set out in his Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste.6 Knight in turn had followed such Scottish associationists as David Hume and Archibald Alison in stressing the importance to an aesthetic response of connections made in the observer's mind.7 The presence of this outlook in Soane's writing should lead us to be particularly attentive to the ideas which he associated with particular forms, as he would have expected the building to exert its influence through making associations of ideas in visitors' minds. Given the expectation that a building and its setting should be congruently related by this means it becomes important to re-establish the topographical context for the building at Dulwich, which has changed between Soane's time and our own.

Dulwich today is a prosperous suburb with genteel dwellings, and the college is approached along streets with firm surfaces and drains. In Soane's day it was at a remove from the city, still a village, as shown by a map drawn in i 808 (and still in the college's possession). The site remains substantially surrounded by open land, munici- pal gardens and playing fields which would then have been relatively muddy and rustic, so the location itself brought with it the notion of the primitive. Soane himself had earlier produced designs in a primitive manner for a similar location, Fulham, where he proposed a dairy with a portico of bark-covered tree trunks, clearly influenced by Laugier's Essai.8 Soane saw an affinity between the primitive age of the world and the medieval age, as has already been mentioned (further evidence is presented below), so the idea of the Gothic was for Soane already to some extent implicit in Dulwich as a setting. The idea of the primitive was connected with that of origins, and Soane was constantly exhorting his students to go back to first principles:

... this evil of applying without recurrence to first principles.

.. .the architect, by close study and unwearied attention, should be learned in history, well informed of the primitive destination and origin of things, and on all occasions be able to trace every invention up to First Principles and Original Causes.

... the Ancients, not regarding the origin, misapplied the Pyramid in some of their works, and set a bad example to the moderns, who, without considering whether a practice was sanctioned by first Principles, have merely availed themselves of Ancient errors.9

SOANE AT DULWICH 97



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 37: 1994

Fig. I. SirJohn Soane, Picture Gallery and Mausoleum, Dulwich College, 1811 depicted in nine watercolour panels byJ. M. Gandy, exhibited Royal Academy 1823

Main entrance

O = t M :a O = O Oa M O O O

0 O

Fig. 2. Plan of Dulwich College Picture Gallery and Mausoleum, showing original layout and also including the projected but unexecuted arcaded screen wall. Drawing derived from Fig. I, bottom left panel

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The primitive, then, had in Soane's mind a dual aspect. Seen in one way it was unenlightened and less good than the classical; but seen in the other it was a constant reference against which more elaborate work would bejudged. He consistently saw the primitive, leading in the direction of classicism, in a more positive light than the medieval, which led away from it. A 'primitive' building was close to the source of authority and meaning in architecture, and it was important that the architect did not lose sight of it.

At Dulwich Soane's building was not to be isolated, but was to extend an existing construction, Dulwich College, which was at the time seen as Gothic (though today it would be calledJacobean). Soane's work was commissioned by the college as a result of a bequest by Sir Francis Bourgeois, who had been friendly with Soane and specified that the commission for the building should go to him. There is a record of a conversation between the Master of the College and Bourgeois, shortly before Bourgeois died: Now he [Bourgeois] said, when you have any alterations, how do you mean to have them done? I said I was of the opinion that for establishments such as ours the Gothic was clearly the style. He said yes, most certainly.10

This exchange has been the source of an idea that Soane was commissioned to design a Gothic building at Dulwich. Whatever the college's style, and whatever the style of Soane's addition, it was at the time 'a rambling and untidy building',1 and so by classical standards an unfortunate building. It could more positively be read as 'picturesque', and Soane would instantly have seen it in this way.

The picturesque was a fashionable and influential aesthetic category, with which Soane would have been familiar as a matter of course, but since he owned copies of the relevant books it is reasonable to suppose that he followed the published exchanges between Humphry Repton, Uvedale Price, and Richard Payne Knight, which defined and propagated the picturesque. The idea included irregularity in general, encouraged the mixing of styles, and clearly influenced Soane's work, not least at Dulwich,12 though he disapproved of the picturesque idea of making new buildings look as if they had been extended at different periods by using different styles for their different parts. In this he was rejecting the principal orthodoxy of the theorists of the picturesque who maintained that what worked well in a painting should be used as a guide in architectural composition. For Soane pictures of buildings and real buildings were not to be confused. 13

PRINCIPLES AND PASSIONS

Soane consulted many books in the preparation of his lectures in the years immediately before the Dulwich commission, including Knight's Principles of Taste,14 to which he was indebted for some of his ideas about the history of architecture; a general sympathy is evident in their tastes, despite some differences. A recurring theme in Knight's work is an antipathy to regulations, which culminates in his general conclusion that there are no eternal principles of taste, except that taste must change. 5 Knight was no more sympathetic to the Gothic than was Soane, but he did see that it had some virtue. The Gothic masons may, in Soane's and Knight's view, have been in the grip of superstition, but in their architecture they were at least free from that radical vice 'the spirit of

SOANE AT DULWICH 99




system'.16 In spite of their misguided philosophy, their lack of true culture, and their barbarism, because they trusted their judgement and acted without reference to rules, they produced architecture of merit: The contrivers of this refined and fantastic Gothic seem to have aimed at producing grandeur and solemnity, together with lightness of effect; and incompatible as these qualities may seem, by attending to the effect only, and considering the means of producing it as wholly subordinate, and in their own power, they succeeded to a degree, which the Grecian architects, who worked by rule, never approached.17

So Knight's hostility to rules was even stronger than his prejudice against the Middle

Ages. When the Greeks, whom he all but worshipped, worked according to rules even they could be surpassed. Among 'modern' architects Knight's favourite was Van-

brugh, who broke more rules than anybody else; and Soane too admired him, calling him 'the Shakespeare of architects'.18 Vanbrugh was something of a hero of the

picturesque19 which is even more difficult than Gothic to define, being dependent not on the presence of any individual element in a design but rather on the way in which the elements are organized, by being linked through some association in the mind with the manner ofpainters.20 Soane directly echoed Knight's assertion that the Gothic masons worked only for the sake of effect, regardless of the rules of taste,21 when he advised that 'The young architect should study [Gothic] with the most serious attention, not for the sake of its Taste, but for its Effect in mass and detail.'22

Knight's remark owes something to Walpole, who had written that 'one must have taste to be sensible of the beauties of Grecian architecture; one only wants passions to feel Gothic'.23 It is clear that both Knight and Soane had a low opinion of the Middle Ages in general, but felt that there were redeeming features. Soane had been prepared to make use of Gothic in a quite conventional way when extending existing Gothic buildings, for example at Stowe (I805-07), but it was something he came to resist.24 Soane's house at Lincoln's Inn Fields shows evidence of his fascination with the Gothic in the incorporation of salvaged ornament from Westminster Hall into his very un-Gothic facade; and again in the dark recesses of the 'Monk's Parlour' in the basement,25 where 'Gothic' carried the associations which it still does carry today when it is applied to a macabre or horrifying narrative. These tales reached a peak in their popularity at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, and just as they dwelt on the unhealthy and neurotic, so might Gothic architecture be invoked whenever there was a need for a frisson of the morbid and mysterious. Given its overtones, it was well suited to an architecture associated with death.

Knight and Soane did not know one another personally, but their activities were monitored by Joseph Farington, who thought Knight arrogant, opinionated, and not altogether trustworthy; while Soane was not quite a gentleman. On one occasion Henry Fuseli, feeling that Soane had slighted him, told Farington, who recounted the story in his diary, concluding that 'Fuseli did not think it worth while to make any reply to Soane, but wished me to mention to Dance this additional instance of Soane's peevish and little mind expressed in a manner which might only have been expected from a footman.'26 Farington also found Soane's suspension of his lectures in I8Io exasperating, capricious, and perverse:27 Soane having criticized Robert Smirke's Covent Garden Theatre in one of his lectures, a rule was suddenly introduced (by

IO0



Farington and Smirke's father, also an Academician) forbidding professors at the Royal Academy from making 'comments or criticisms on the opinions or productions of living artists in this Country'.28 Soane was not prepared to tolerate this newly-stated condition, and stopped lecturing. He also refused to resign his post, so no one else could be appointed to give the lectures, thereby creating a situation which did not admit a comfortable resolution within the norms of gentlemanly behaviour. We can see here Soane seeming punctiliously to obey all the written rules whilst flouting the unwritten ones, which led Farington to think him ungentlemanly; but this cast of mind also informed Soane's later designs, which were both doctrinaire in their way and highly original. Whereas Knight preferred to disregard rules as pedantic and inhibiting, Soane seems rather to have enjoyed them, particularly when he could claim to have upheld the letter of a rule when actually undermining its accepted spirit. It would have been quite possible for Soane to have argued that - despite all superficial appearances to the contrary - his design for the mausoleum and picture gallery at Dulwich College was essentially Gothic, as the building conforms at all points with both Soane's and Knight's stipulations for the Gothic style.

Knight was not prepared to credit the Gothic masons with any significant inventive- ness where the elements of their architecture were concerned. He supposed that 'the pointed arch, which we call Gothic, is the primitive arch',29 and that it was adopted through ignorance, not by deliberate choice. He thought that medieval battlements were copied from earlier Greek and Roman models, and that the cathedrals were adapted from classical originals: That style of architecture, which we call cathedral or monastic Gothic, is manifestly a corruption of the sacred architecture of the Greeks and Romans, by a mixture of the Moorish or Saracenesque, which is formed out of combination of the Egyptian, Persian, and Hindoo. It may be traced through all its variations from the church of Santa Sophia at Constantinople, and the cathedral of Montreale near Palermo, the one of the sixth, and the other of the twelfth century, down to the King's chapel at Cambridge, the last and most perfect of this kind of buildings; and to trace it accurately would be a most curious and interesting work.30

Thus Knight argued, quite properly, that Gothic buildings were derived from classical models, but he did so in such a way as to suggest that they were degraded versions of their models, mixed with Egyptian and other exotic and barbaric architecture. He could, for example, have shown them in a positive light by interpreting them as a development, overcoming and transcending their classical roots, but to have done so would have been alien to his sympathies, which lay very firmly with the ancient pagans. Soane too said that Gothic 'succeeded and in some degree grew out of the Architecture of the Romans', but it did so via the Saxon buildings which were 'little more than clumsy imitations of Roman works', and culminated in the fifteenth century 'when ignorance and caprice seemed totally to have eradicated from men's minds every idea of the beauties of Ancient Architecture, when there were no fixed Principles in our Art recognised'.31

The 'Gothic' for for both men encompassed all architecture between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the decline dating from the accession of Con- stantine, the first Christian emperor (in this they followed Gibbon in the Decline and Fall). This period in fact saw many different types of architecture, so it is not surprising

SOANE AT DULWICH IOI




that Knight should have found the Gothic style difficult to define. He considered that there could be no pure Gothic, no essence of the style: 'there are no rules - no

proportions - and, consequently, no definitions.'32 The great medieval churches which Knight would have known best were Westminster Abbey and Hereford Cathedral.33 Both are very heterogeneous buildings, made up over centuries in a variety of styles which we have no trouble in recognizing as those isolated by Thomas Rickman - Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular34 - which were all confused as unregulated Gothic where Knight was concerned. Soane, though he did not have the benefit of Rickman's researches, which were not published until 1817, analysed the progress of the style through various stages, from the 'prodigious clumsiness and gloom' of early Saxon buildings through the 'proud and expensive Normans' to the 'excessive lightness' of later work.35 Both Soane and Knight treated the problem of defining Gothic by appealing to the idea of a governing paradigm.

CAVES AND TREES

Knight offered two possible paradigms for the Gothic style, the cathedral and the castle. He wrote that no specific elements showed that a building dated from the Middle

Ages, the elements which seemed to be characteristic having, in fact, been plagiarized from classical or pre-classical sources. A building could, however, be considered Gothic if it seemed to be aspiring to one or other of the paradigms.36 Soane also attempted to describe the Gothic in architecture by using governing paradigms rather than clear rules. He divided the cathedral Gothic in two, supposing that in its earliest days it had been guided by the idea of a cave, and later by an avenue of trees. In making this division Soane was drawing on a number of sources and synthesizing a variety of ideas. Firstly, the division of the cathedral-Gothic into two distinct styles had been made by the Jesuit antiquarian R.P.Tournemine, whomJ.L.de Cordemoy cited in the definition of Gothic which he gave in his glossary of terms, and which Soane translated thus: 'We give, says [Tournemine], the name of Gothic buildings to all that has not been built according to the rules of Greek and Roman Architecture: but we distinguish two sorts of Gothic Architecture, the Ancient and the Modern.'37

Knight linked early Gothic buildings with Egypt: 'the low proportions of [the columns] in those buildings, which we call Saxon, are evidently AEgyptian, and were probably brought into Europe by the Saracens';38 and Quatremere de Quincy described the cave as the original model for Egyptian architecture.39 Soane endorsed the origin of Egyptian architecture in the cave:

Egypt abounds with natural Excavations, from which the Egyptians seem to have taken their taste as well as the first ideas of their Building; and we may also observe that even in their subsequent and most splendid works they never lost sight of their primitive Model. The Cavern is perpetually the Type of their architecture ....40

A connection between Egyptians and caves had also been made byJacon Bryant in his monumental undertaking A New System - or, An Analysis ofAncient Mythology.41 This sought to persuade the reader that Egyptian priests had, after the Biblical flood, migrated to many parts of the world, where they became known as Druids, though he confusingly suggested also that they may have been even more ancient and could have

102



built such monuments as Stonehenge even before the Druids arrived.42 The Druids worshipped in groves of trees, which Soane thought of as the model for the later Gothic, as we shall see. Of the cave-Gothic Soane wrote:

When Christianity first appeared, its votaries were compelled to perform their devotions in dark subterranean places, in the most retired and gloomy recesses. From these circumstances may we not conclude that as soon as free permission was allowed to the public exercise of the sacred functions of Christianity, the primitive Christians, led by religious veneration and respect for early habits, endeavoured to display in their buildings above ground as much of the heaviness, gloom and intricacy of the subterranean sepulchres, and concealed places, wherein they had at first sheltered themselves from persecution .... If in the blind bigotry of early times fear and terror were to be excited, while gloom and melancholy were mistaken for zeal and devotion, it does not lessen the merit of the builders of those early sacred edifices so admirably calculated as they are to impress.43

For Soane, then, early Gothic and Egyptian work were allied because both originated in the cave, and continued a tradition of worshipping in caves: naturally-formed caverns in the case of the Egyptians, and catacombs in the Christians' case. The early Christians' architectural ideas were, by this reading, formed under the weight of oppression and fear, and were subsequently, from the time of Constantine, put into the service of a regime which exerted its influence through ignorance, bigotry, and fear. Soane thus made a distinction between the praiseworthy skill of the designers and builders, who brought about their intentions with great accomplishment, and the deplorable aims of the institution which directed their efforts and set their goals. This very clearly shows the limits of Soane's admiration for Gothic architecture. He could freely praise Gothic masons, but he would not have favoured a general revival of the Gothic style, there being in a civilized society only a limited scope for overtly expressed - even if highly accomplished - gloom and repression.

Soane's second paradigm for Gothic was however less pejorative; indeed it was highly picturesque, and somewhat pagan. He remarked that the solid parts of the early Gothic buildings were excessive, but that in later works they became correspondingly slight: Thus arose a new and singular system of building, on the origin of which many ingenious conjectures have been made, being by some attributed to the ancient and venerated custom of worshipping in groves.

This is a very natural suggestion, for it is easy to suppose that, after it became the custom to worship the Deity in covered buildings, pious men of deep reflexion and superior science, warmed by the contemplation of awe-inspiring effects produced by the varied play oflights, and the deep tones of the various shadows in groves of trees, were tempted to realise these scenes of Nature in buildings of stone. If such was their object it must be admitted that they were as successful in this system as in the former.44

This idea was not medieval but can be traced back to William Stukeley, writing in I724.45 Soane had copies of Stukeley's books about Stonehenge and Avebury, as well as his Palaeographia sacra (dedicated to Augusta, Princess of Wales, Archdruidess of Kew) in which Stukeley framed a number of elaborate arguments, following his usual principle of'not pretending to a stiff scholastic proof of everything I say, which would be odious and irksome to the reader, as well as myself'.46 This lack of stiffness could

SOANE AT DULWICH 1o3




bring startling results, such as his conclusion that Christianity had been the first religion of the world.47 In Palaeographia sacra he wrote of the origins of architecture: ... these groves for religious use all nations took from that of ABRAHAM. our Druids too from him.

From these groves arose the first ideas of architecture. first was it employ'd for sacred purpose. and the first kind or Order of architecture, was that we erroneously call Gothic. 'tis truly Arabian: came from Arabia, when cover'd temples were built, after the Mosaic Tabernacle.

Such is the fabric of our antient churches and cathedrals. the slender pillars imitate the taper trunk of a tree. the curve of the arches is from the delicate branching of the boughs, in a wood, or grove. the mullion'd lacework of the windows, the like; intercepting the dubious light, as in a real grove.48

Again, here, an association between the primitive and the Gothic is made, as the origins of Gothic are placed back in the mists of time along with Egyptian architecture.

The idea of deriving Gothic from an avenue of trees was also supported, probably more importantly for Soane, and certainly with a more persuasive rationality, by Laugier: It would seem that these great vaults formed by two rows of full-grown trees furnished the model for the architecture of our Gothic churches; and seen in this way, it is much more reasonable and sensible than our arrangements of columns surmounted by an enfeebling entablature. Everything here is carried from the base, and this is the reason for the great effect. I do not know if in our churches' interiors we could do better than to imitate and perfect this Gothic architecture, saving Greek architecture for the outside. I imagine that a church, all the columns of which were great trunks of palm trees, their branches reaching out to right, and left, taking the highest ones along all the contours of the vault, would make an astonishing effect.49

Laugier here suggests that Gothic vaults could be seen to be structurally superior to the posts and lintels of Greek architecture, but in this Soane did not follow him, neither discussing medieval architecture's structural merits nor seeing it as structurally expressive. In I803 Quatremere de Quincy had argued against the idea of an avenue of trees as an origin, saying that the cathedrals developed from Roman models,50 and Knight said the same in I805 (without even mentioning the idea of a derivation from trees), presumably supposing that Gothic vaults derived from Roman precedents. Soane too conceded that Gothic architecture 'in some degree grew out of the Roman',5s but was clearly attracted to Stukeley's explanation, though he was not so confident in its scholarly accuracy as to give it his unqualified support: To whatever causes the origin of this novel and imposing system is to be attributed, all agree that long avenues of trees, of different growths, disposed in parallel lines, intersected by others at right angles, whose branches meet, and, as it were, cross each other, do in fact remind us of the side aisles, transepts, and other parts of a Gothic cathedral.52

The conviction is less emphatic than in an earlier draft of this lecture, in which, knowing that the idea had been challenged, Soane wrote: If the Gothic Architecture has any pretensions to originality they can only arise from the happy imitation of a Grove of trees, I believe no reflecting person ever entered a Gothic Cathedral without having groves of trees brought to his recollection.53

So Soane was inclined to accept the explanation, but knew that the evidence for it was not conclusive. The difference in expression here seems not to reflect any change of

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SOANE AT DULWICH

heart on Soane's part, but rather shows scrupulous scholarly caution when presenting his ideas to an audience. Like Knight he chose King's College Chapel in Cambridge as his model of excellence in this later type: 'the decorations of the roof, the painted windows, the gloom and perspective, the harmony and general proportions of the whole interior contribute in placing this justly admired edifice amongst the most noble and magnificent structures.'54 And Soane gave his reasons for supposing the Gothic style to be generally inapplicable: The Gothic Architecture, however happily adapted to religious purposes, is little calculated for the common habits of life. Its thick walls and small windows (admitting light as it were by stealth) are more adapted to Montezuma's house of affliction. The features and general character of this mode of building are not expressive of cheerfulness or comfort.55

The expressive needs of a mausoleum, though, are quite different from those of everyday life, and none of these objections would apply.

Although in Gothic architecture there were supposed to be no definite rules, there were characteristic effects. Knight spoke of light, diffused:

through unequal varieties of space, divided but not separated, so as to produce intricacy without confusion; the room was evidently one, and the general form and dimensions of it were easily discernible through the successive ranges of arches, piers, and columns, with which the view was interrupted; but there was no point, from which the eye could see the whole of it at one glance; so that, though much was seen, something still remained to be seen, which the imagination measured from the scale of the rest. - Thus effects more imposing have been produced, than are, perhaps, to be found in any other works of man.56

There is a watercolour byJ.M. Gandy which seems calculatedly to represent the gallery at Dulwich as a realization of this description, in which the arches recede through diffuse light and dissolve in the distance (Fig. 3). It is also significant that the arches were given no defined springing-point, since Soane and others saw this detail as characteris- tically Gothic. Following Cordemoy, Soane explained: The earlier arch, springing from an impost, or from the capital of a low truncated cone or pillar, entirely disappeared. The large truncated shaft itself was now formed either by a cluster of columns, or was divided into various parts by mouldings starting vertically on the pavement, and from thence continuing uninterruptedly into the vaulted roof of the nave.57

Richard Brown, a contemporary who knew and admired Soane's work, remarked that the aim of the architect at Dulwich was 'to unite the classical delicacies of the Greek and Roman designs with the playfulness of the Gothic, not by the use of the pointed arch, but by adopting the principle of continuous lines, ramifying (without horizontal impediment) from the vertical to the circular.'58

Soane later exploited the same idea more dramatically in the vault for the Old Colonial or Five Per Cent Office at the Bank of England (1818). The picture gallery's ceiling soffit could be seen to have been modelled to suggest the idea of a vault, though it does not follow structural lines. The illumination here is from large lanterns at the top of the vault, which was a development of Soane's normal practice, and was specifically recommended by Laugier in connection with Gothic vaults: The mosaic of a great vault has its own merit and beauty. It is a form which cannot be dismissed, even if it is a little heavy. It is suitable for places with a character which is serious, sombre or somewhat wild. This form does not reach the perfection of its beauty unless it is complete,

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Io6 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 37: 1994

?;''"t?'': "J'!~ '%;: .

_ i

....' I

t

'

Fig.3. Interiorviewofthegallery, Fig. 4. Interior view of the mausoleum, detail of Fig. 1, centre left panel detail of Fig. 1, centre right panel

without lunettes, but inconveniently this shuts out daylight from what should be the most luminous part, as it represents the celestial realm. Complete vaults without lunettes were used in antique temples and in churches built before the twelfth century. Compared with the astonishing gaiety of the churches which were built later, where a lighter architecture filled the vault with light and the most beautiful effects oflight, the gloom of the earlier vaults makes them disagreeable wherever propriety does not demand a sombre light or actual shadow. It would be possible to bnrghten them by piercing, according to the building's form, a square or diamond- shaped opening at the top of the vault, and raising on this opening a lantern, the ceiling of which could be made from the cut-out part of the vault. 59

t4: .

Fig. 3he Interior gallery needed wal space for the hanging of paintings, which mausoleum, impossible to arrange for the walls to be as sght as the tre riGothic would properly

without lunettes, but inconveniently this shuts out daylight from what should have been disguised

luminous part, as it represents the celestial realm. Complete vaults without lunettes were used in

antique temples and in churches been built before the front of th centuryilding. IfCompared with the

expreastonishing gaiet out the churches well-lit Gothich were built later, here a lightcour he would have chosen vaulthe tree-Goth light and the mostel; butiful effecn his prooflivight, the loo oe earlier vaults makes them d isagreeablec whereverout deviating from his classical taste making correction for the epossie to brighten themss and by piercing aording t o thes to makeform, a square or diamond- shapetheir full architectonic effect. This ois what Lauger recommended, the ceiin g of which

could be made from the cut-out part of the vault.yle warned against59

The Dulwich gallery needed wall space for the hanging of paintings, which made it impossible to arrange for the walls to be as slight as the tree-Gothic would properly have demanded, though from the outside this deficiency would have been disguised had Soane's projected arcade been built across the front of the building. If Soane had expressly set out to design a well-lit Gothic space, then of course he would have chosen the tree-Gothic as his model; but given his proclivities he would have realized his Gothic effects without deviating from his classical taste, making correction for the excessive lightness and banishing all ornament so as to make the pure volumes have their full architectonic effect. This is what Laugier recommended, but what Knight, who saw Gothic as intrinsically a cluttered style, warned against.6?

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SOANE AT DULWICH

The building's other principal part, the mausoleum (Fig. 4), can be understood as a correspondingly appropriate use of the cave-paradigm: an architecture which had its origins in the Early Christian catacombs was perfectly consonant with a place of entombment. It is a startling room, housing the embalmed bodies of three of Soane's friends. Hidden sources bathe it in an amber light, and it evokes very clearly those subterranean sepulchres to which light was admitted 'as it were by stealth'. Soane associated the cave with the sacred, in the way that Bryant had described: '. . these melancholy recesses were esteemed the places of the highest sanctity: and so greatly did this notion prevail, that in aftertimes, when this practice had ceased, still the innermost part of the temple was denominated the cavern.'61 At Dulwich the mausoleum is not only the innermost part of the building, it is also the most reverential. The eerie light which enters this room through hidden amber-glazed windows stands in marked contrast to the pointedly natural light in the gallery. Coloured light itself was cited by Knight as characteristic of Gothic buildings: 'This grandeur of effect was rendered more solemn, and consequently more grand, by large masses of dim and discoloured light, diffused, in various directions ... .62 Soane used the coloured light in precisely this way: to make the mausoleum, which is in fact a small building (much smaller than Gandy's under-sized bystanders in Fig. 5 would lead one to believe), appear solemn and grand. In its details the building uses classical motifs, but the whole also conforms to the idea of a cave and it has the diffuse coloured light which was a Gothic characteristic. The colour of the light itself, though, was classicized. Instead of the blue light which tends to predominate in medieval glass, the amber light of the mausoleum brings to mind the light of the setting sun to be found in Virgil's poems, the atmosphere of which did much to inspire painters such as Poussin and Claude, some of whose works hang in the picture gallery.

'~~~~~~~~~~~~' " i "* Y . i- "- t ' -

4^ ^ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~I,:1,

Fig. 5. Exterior view of the mausoleum, with gallery behind; byJ. M. Gandy, watercolour

107




Summerson has pointed out that the exterior of the mausoleum is a 'primitive' re-working of a tower from Robert Adam's church at Mistley, which was undoubtedly classical.63 However Soane did not render the original element by element into a primitive style. The sarcophagi on the roof of the mausoleum make an aptly funereal translation of the form of the Mistley tower's pediments. Soane at Dulwich translated the orb which topped the tower into a funerary urn and added four more urns, which find no counterpart in forms in the Mistley tower, but which are located where one would expect to find pinnacles in a Gothic tower. This might suggest that Soane had in mind not only Adam's, but also a Gothic tower. The transformation can be understood as another attempt to create a Gothic effect by using classic forms, broadly in the manner of the spires of Wren's City churches. On three sides of the mausoleum's roof there are mock sarcophagi, corresponding with the three real ones within. Beneath each there is a doorway, but these do not function as entrances. Each is fully worked and has a stone architrave, but is set forward from the wall which one would expect it to penetrate, so that there is a clear space between the door and the wall, which can be seen obliquely running through without interruption. In utilitarian terms these elements are capricious and perverse: none is there for symmetry's sake, because all of them are fakes.64 The doors are not only fakes, mere symbols of doors, they are also exposed as such by being set forward away from the wall. They have the slightly canted jambs, which architects always used when they were designating the Egyptian style, 65 and can be seen as a re-working of the solid stone 'spirit' doors which are to be found in ancient Egyptian mastabas, through which could pass the spirits of the dead, but not living people, still possessed of their bodies.

So in the mausoleum there is a mixture of imagery from primitive, Gothic, and Egyptian sources, all of them absorbed into a rather unusual classical style. The associations prompted by these signs would have been congruent (and therefore harmonious) because they all came from cultures without the benefit of classical learning. The designer of this building, however, clearly was acquainted with classicism and was not prepared to surrender his superior taste. Gothic and other architectures were used for the sake of their effects, and for their range of associations suitable to a burial place, but the work as a whole was given coherence and elevated status by being disciplined with respect to classical taste. The mausoleum therefore can be seen as both Gothic and classic at the same time, the classical range of expression being extended to intensify the expression of the mysteries associated with death.

In drawing on the Gothic Soane eliminated the 'accidents' which would usually indicate to us that we were looking at a Gothic building, to leave only the definitive characteristics of the style. In doing this he moved beyond what we would normally think of as eclecticism and found a primitive common ground shared by both classical and Gothic architecture; or, to use a different image, the crude Gothic effects have been purified to the point that they have been sublimated into a well-mannered classical building. Elements or ideas may have been drawn from a wide range of sources, but at Dulwich they have been synthesized into single manner (or style) which is quite unlike the 'mixed' architecture Knight advocated. Soane in his lectures was unoriginal so far as architectural history was concerned: virtually all his judgements and observations can be traced back to published sources. In drawing on the lessons of history for the sake of

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his architectural designs, though, he was very creative indeed. In the classicism of the picture gallery and mausoleum at Dulwich it is possible to find Gothic effects, and to see at work an attitude to Gothic which is neither revivalistic nor dismissive. If a late twentieth-century observer were to approach Soane's architecture with little understanding of classical architecture and only a vague notion of how to identify it, then the Dulwich Picture Gallery will be seen as a classical building. For such an observer it will have the popular significance of classical architecture and will be associated imprecisely with a feeling for tradition, visits to stately homes and so on. Alternatively if we approach it with modernist expectations of buildings, then we will notice at Dulwich an anticipation of the geometric preoccupations of much twentieth-century architecture, and see Soane as a precursor of the modern. These can be useful ways in which to understand the work, but they neglect to understand what Soane's architecture could have meant to him or his contemporaries. By using concepts taken from Soane's thought and reading, we can develop a way of understanding his architecture which is more satisfactory as history, and what we find then is a concern to make architecture from first principles, purging ancient errors of taste and judgement.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank David Watkin, Margaret Richardson, Christina Scull, and Susan Palmer for their advice and help in the preparation of this article. Figures I and 3-5 are copyright the Trustees of Sir John Soane's Museum.

NOTES

I John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 153o-1830 (Harmondsworth, 1953), 'Soane and the Picturesque', pp. 298-99; Dorothy Stroud, The Architecture of Sir John Soane (London, 1961), pp. IIO-II; G.-Tilman Mellinghoff, 'Soane's Dulwich Picture Gallery Revisited',John Soane (London, 1983), pp. 77-99; Giles Waterfield, Soane and After: the Architecture of Dulwich Picture Gallery (London, 1987). 2 SirJohn Soane, Lectures on Architecture, ed. A. T. Bolton (London, 1929), p. 78. 3 Marginal note in Soane notebook 15, labelled 'MSS I805 Architecture de Cordemoi, Architecture de J F Blondel', p. ioi, SirJohn Soane's Museum. 4 Soane, Lectures, p. 90. 5 Ibid., p. 82. 6 Richard Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry of the Principles of Taste (London, I805). Page references given below refer to the fourth and final edition of i808. Soane owned a copy of the first edition. 7 Andrew Ballantyne, 'Genealogy of the Picturesque', British Journal of Aesthetics, 32, no. 4 (October 1992), 320-29. 8 Marc-Antoine Laugier, Essai sur l'architecture (Paris, 1753) translated with an introduction by Wolfgang and Anni Herrmann (Los Angeles, I977). The most detailed study of Soane's primitivism is to be found in Pierre de la Ruffiniere du Prey,John Soane: the Making ofan Architect (Chicago, 1982), Chapter I2 '"In the Primitive Manner of Building"', pp. 245-64, where the dairy projects (1781) for Lady Elizabeth Craven are described and illustrated on pp.245-47. 9 Soane, Lectures, pp. 21, 70, 73. Io Waterfield, Soane and After, p. 7, quoting a remark cited by A. T. Bolton, The Works of SirJohn Soane (London, c. I920), p. 78.

I Waterfield, Soane and After, p. 7. 12 Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View (New York, 1927); David Watkin, The English Vision: the Picturesque in Architecture, Landscape and Garden Design (London, 1982); Walter Hipple, The Beautiful, and the Sublime, and the Picturesque in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory (Carbondale, Ill., I957). Sir John Summerson called the phase to which Dulwich belongs the 'picturesque period' of Soane's career; John Summerson, 'Soane: the Case-History of a Personal Style', Journal ofthe Royal Institute ofBritish Architects, 3rd ser., 58, no. 3 (anuary 1951), 83-91 (p. 88).

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SOANE AT DULWICH IO9



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 37: I994

13 Marginal note in Soane's own copy of Knight's Principles of Taste (i805) at SirJohn Soane's Museum, p. 157 (pages I6o-6I of the i808 edition). Commenting on Knight's text 'in the pictures of Claude and Gaspar, we perpetually see a mixture of Grecian and Gothic architecture employed with the happiest effect in the same building.. .', Soane noted 'In painting[, ] but such [illegible] are not to be besought for similar practices as new works.' I4 As Summerson (Architecture in Britain, p. 298) pointed out. I5 Knight, Principles of Taste, pp. 234, 475-76. i6 Ibid., p. 382. 17 Ibid., p. 176. 18 Soane, Lectures, p. 90. 19 David Watkin has even credited Vanbrugh with inventing the picturesque: Thomas Hope 1769-1831 and the Neo-Classical Idea (London, 1968), p. 125. 20 This at least was Knight's theory. Price on the other hand believed that there were 'atoms' of picturesqueness in picturesque objects: Ballantyne, 'Genealogy of the Picturesque'. 2I Knight, Principles of Taste, p. 176. 22 Soane, Lectures, p. 82. 23 Horace Walpole, Anecdotes ofPainting in England, quoted by Arthur O. Lovejoy, 'The First Gothic Revival and the Return to Nature' in Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore, I948), pp. 156-57. 24 Alexandra Wedgwood, 'Soane's Law Courts at Westminster', AA Files, 24 (Autumn 1992), 3 I-40. 25 John Summerson, A New Description of SirJohn Soane's Museum (London, 1954, rev. I986) facade, p. 13; the 'Parloir of Padre Giovanni', formed in 1824, p. 3 . 26 Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary, ed. Kathryn Cave (New Haven, I982), vol. IX, p. 3246, Friday 25 March I808. Soane and his wife had connived to install one Mrs Cooke as a housekeeper at the Royal Academy. They did not succeed, felt thwarted (Farington says that they were 'disappointed') and blamed Fuseli. When Fuseli sent round a print, to which Soane had previously subscribed, it was sent back with a cursory note saying that he, Soane, 'had more Prints than guineas'. 27 Farington, Diary, vol. XI (I983), p. 3886, Friday I March 1811. 28 John Richards, Secretary R.A. to Professor Soane, 3 February I8Io; in A. T. Bolton, The Portrait of SirJohn Soane, R.A., (1753-1837) Set Forth in Lettersfrom His Friends (1775-1837) (London, 1927), pp. 148-49. 29 Knight, Principles of Taste, p. 166. 30 Ibid., pp. 163-64, I66. 31 Soane, Lectures, pp. 79 and 84. 32 Knight, Principles of Taste, p. 162. 33 Knight was a Member of Parliament and until I8o8 lived in Whitehall when in London; his seat was at Downton in Herefordshire. 34 Thomas Rickman, An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation (London, 817). 35 Soane, Lectures, p. 79. 36 Knight, Principles of Taste, p. 162. 37 J. L. de Cordemoy, Nouveau traite de toute l'architecture ou 'art de batir, utile aux entrepreneurs et aux ouvriers (Paris, I714), p. 241. In all transcriptions from the French below accentuation has been corrected to modern conventions, but spelling has been allowed to stand: 'On donne, dit il, le nom d'6difice Gothique a tout ce qui n'a pas ete bati selon les regles de l'Architecture Greque et Romaine mais on distingue deux especes d'Architecture Gothique, l'ancienne et la moderne.' Soane's translation is in notebook 15, labelled 'MSS 1805 Architecture de Cordemoi, Architecture deJ F Blondel', pp. 99-o00 (Sir John Soane's Museum). 38 Knight, Principles of Taste, p. i66. 39 A. C. Quatrem6re de Quincy, De l'architecture egyptienne consideree dans son origine, ses principes et son goat, et comparee sous les memes rapports a l'architecturegrecque . . . (Paris, 1803); and see Sylvia Lavin, Quatremere de Quincy and the Invention of a Modern Language of Architecture (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), pp. I8-6I. 40 Soane, Lectures, p. 20. 41 Jacon Bryant, A New System, 3 vols (London, I774-76). Soane consulted the work and made some notes on 27 September 1807 (notebook 9, Sir John Soane's Museum). 42 Bryant, New System, I: 75-6; III: 533. 43 Soane, Lectures, pp. 79-80. 44 Ibid., p. 80. 45 Lovejoy, 'The First Gothic Revival', pp. 153-54. 46 Stukeley, Stonehenge: a Temple Restored to the British Druids (London, 1740), Preface. 47 Ibid., contents page. 48 Stukeley, Palaeographia sacra: or, Discourses on Sacred Subjects (London, 1763), pp. 17-18. 49 Laugier, Observations sur l'architecture (The Hague, 1765), pp. I 6-I7: 'II pariot que ces grands berceaux formes par deux rangees d'arbres de haute futaye ont fourni le modele de l'Architecture de nos Eglises gothiques; et a ne

IIO



l'envisager que par cet endroit, elle est plus raisonnable et plus sensee que nos ordonnances a colonnes surmontees d'un entablement tres-faillant. Tout y porte de fond, et de la le grand effet. Je ne sSai si dans l'interieur de nos

Eglises nous ne serions pas mieux d'imiter et de perfectionner cette Architecture Gothique, en reservant l'Architecture greque pour les dehors. J'imagine qu'une Eglise dont toutes les colonnes serioent de gros troncs de

palmiers, qui etendroit leurs branches a droit et a gauche, et qui porteroit les plus hautes sur tous les contours de la voite, serioent un effet surprenant.' 'Berceau' literally means cradle, or arbour. In an architectural context a 'voite berceau' is a barrel-vault, not a cradle-vault or an arbour-vault, though the figuration is highly pertinent; hence the decision in the present context to translate 'berceau' as vault throughout. 50 Quatremere de Quincy, Architecture egyptienne, p. IIo; Lavin, Quatremere de Quincy, p. 60. 5I Soane, Lectures, p. 79. 52 Ibid., p. 80. 53 Soane, lecture notes, portfolio Ii, pp. 9-Io (Sir John Soane's Museum). 54 Soane, Lectures, p. 8I. 55 Ibid., p. 82: 'And storied windows richly dight,/Casting a dim religious light.'John Milton, II Penseroso (163 I) 11. I59-6o. 56 Knight, Principles of Taste, p. 178. 57 Soane, Lectures, p. 80; following Cordemoy, p. I I: '... cette prodigieuse quantite de Colonnes, dont les bases sont assises immediatement sur le pave du rez-de-chaussee, est si bien arrangee, qu'elle laisse voir sans embarras, d'un coup d'oeil toute la grandeur et toute la beaute de ces Edifices.' ('. .. this prodigious quantity of columns, whose bases rest directly on the pavement of the ground floor, is so well arranged that unashamedly it lets one see at once the whole grandeur and the whole beauty of these edifices.') 58 Richard Brown, Domestic Architecture (London, I84I), p. 289. 59 Laugier, Observations, pp. 284-85: 'Un grand berceau, taille en mosaique, a son merite et sa beaute. C'est une forme qu'on ne doit pas rejetter quoi'quelle soit un peu pesante. Elle convient aux endroits dont le caractere est serieux, sombre, un peu sauvage. Cette forme n'a sa parfaite beaute que lorsque le berceau est plein et sans lunette. Mais alors elle a l'inconvenient d'exclure le jour de la partie qui doit etre la plus lumineuse puis qu'elle nous represente le Ciel. Les berceaux pleins et sans lunettes ont ete d'usage dans les Temples antiques et dans les Eglises baties avant le douzieme siecle. Leur obscurite comparee avec le gaiete surprenante des Eglises qui ont baties depuis, et oh une Architecture plus legere a introduit vers la voute, le plus grand jour et les plus beaux effets de lumiere, nous rendra ces berceaux desagreables par-tout ou les bienseances du sujet n'exigeroit pas une lumiere sombre ou de vraies tenebres. On pourroit cependant les egayer en percant a la clef de la voite une ouverture quarree ou parallelogramme, suivant le plan de l'edifice, et en elevant sur cette ouverture une lanterne a jour, au plat-fond de laquelle on transporteroit la partie du berceau enlevee par cette ouverture.' 60 Laugier, Observations, pp. 130-3I: 'Considerons presentement ces memes Eglises avec tous les sots ornements que le gout du I4e et du I5 siecle leur a prodigues. Un affreuxjube se presente quijette sur ces beautes inimitables, le voile le plus deplaisant. Entrons dans le choeur a travers cette horrible barricade. Des stales informes avec de hauts dossiers masquent la vue des collateraux.' ('Now we consider these same churches with all the silly ornaments that fourteenth- and fifteenth-century taste lavished on them. Here a frightful rood screen throws the most unpleasant veil over the building's inimitable beauties. We pass into the choir through this horrible barricade. Shapeless stalls with high backs mask the view of the aisles.') Compare Knight, Principles of Taste, p. I62: 'At this time, when the taste for Gothic architecture has been so generally revived, nothing is more common, than to hear professors, as well as lovers, of the art, expatiating upon the merits of the pure Gothic; and gravely endeavouring to separate it from those spurious and adscitious ornaments, by which it has lately been debased: but, nevertheless, if we ask what they mean by pure Gothic, we can receive no satisfactory answer ...', and p. 180: 'In the Gothic churches, too, a profusion of elaborate ornament, how licentiously soever designed or disposed, seldom failed to produce a similar effect [to that of the magnificent structures of the Roman emperors]: but the modern fashion of making buildings neither rich nor massive, and producing lightness of appearance by the deficiency rather than the disposition of the the parts, is of all tricks of taste the most absurd, and the most certain of counteracting its own ends.' 61 Bryant, New System, I: 218. 62 Knight, Principles of Taste, pp. 177-78. 63 Summerson, Architecture in Britain, p. 299. 64 Colin Davies, Architects'Journal, I8I, no. 17 (24 April I985), pp. 50 and 59-62, argues that the fake doors were introduced in order to balance the real doors of a porch which was not built on the other side of the building, but this does not explain their signification or their 'perversely' detached articulation. 65 Soane, Lectures, p. 7I: The Egyptians' 'apertures of every kind were diminished upwards'.

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Article Contentsp.[96]p.97p.98p.99p.100p.101p.102p.103p.104p.105p.106p.107p.108p.109p.110p.111

Issue Table of ContentsArchitectural History, Vol. 37 (1994), pp. 1-188Front MatterTo the Glory of God: Building the Church of S. Maria della Carit, Venice, 1441-1454 [pp.1-23]Utopia and the Well-Ordered Fortress: J. M. von Schwalbach's Town Plans of 1635 [pp.24-36]Sir Christopher Wren, Edward Woodroffe, J. H. Mansart, and Architectural History [pp.37-67]Maurice-Louis Jolivet's Drawings at West Wycombe Park [pp.68-79]'De architectura': An Irish Eighteenth-Century Gloss [pp.80-95]First Principles and Ancient Errors: Soane at Dulwich [pp.96-111]C. R. Cockerell's 'Architectural Progress of the Bank of England' [pp.112-129]Practicality versus Preservation: Alfred Waterhouse and the Cambridge Colleges [pp.130-152]George Gilbert Scott, Jun., and King's College Chapel [pp.153-164]Letters from Peter Behrens to P. Morton Shand, 1932-1938 [pp.165-187]Back Matter

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First Principles and Ancient Errors: Soane at Dulwich