Sir John Soane's Museum
In ‘Sir John Soane’, Sir John Summerson suggests the 1792 Bank Of England as the seminal work(1). Today this building exists only as wall. Fortunately many of the compositional principles, in plan and section remain preserved in his own house, at Lincoln's Inn Fields in London. Summerson argues that by 1806 Soane’s period of innovation had ended and the rest of his oeuvre was a reworking of previous themes(2) Such a statement could be considered criticism, to my eyes it highlights a dogged persistence, discovery and refinement of ideas, The greatest Architecture is the product of refinement, and a philosophy.
Soane's hopes for a dynasty of architects and for contemporary grand schemes were dashed. By establishing in 1833 by Act Of Parliament his house as a museum he has offered history at least one monument (3).
Until the National Gallery extension Soane had not been directly quoted in a grand manner. The Soane Museum is but a point in history, it would be churlish to suggest it as the sole beginning of any later work.
In Soane's day Lincoln's Inn was bounded by iron railings (his key is in the museum), this lent a walled character to his buildings as they were successively remodelled, and as with his Bank Of England, spaces became rooflit. That constant remodelling has lent a Gothic feet to the building, an accretion of spaces, interlocked. A pragmatic building not a systematic one. This approach leads to Webb! The Red House and hence through Gropius to one string of Modernism.
The building uses internal courtyards, the dining room has mirrored shutters, that when shut revolve the aspect of that room, the objects on the north sill mirroring those in the court outside, and beyond in the Museum. Such was the character of A+P Smthson's 1956 House Of The Future, as well as contemporary (to Soane) excavations of Roman villas.
Further the rear elevation is windowless. Soane did, however, use Coade stone figures on the front facade to echo the buildings opposite, contributing to the London square (ie internal, closed) quality of Lincolnis Inn. (4)
Beneath the statues, the dining room shows another feature of Soane's interest. As with many parts of the house, aided by his changing decoration, it is difficult to determine the exact location of the wall. As with Loos' Karntner bar in Vienna the ceiling planes continue. Some figures are set proud of the wall, others recessed. It is a mark of the room that any photograph contains the image of the photographer as well as the reflections of busts peopling the corners. Looking Glass has never been so well used: Convex glasses in the (vith)drawing room, the dining and breakfast rooms contain the whole space. Flat glasses give onto parallel rooms. With its courtyards and three-storey atrium (the Dome) much potential floor area is 'wasted’, reflected order and clutter more than compensate.
To stand in one part of the house is to appreciate many rooms and spaces. The threefold interlocking of the New Picture Gallery and The Monk's Parlour is Soane at his best, Through the ‘picture doors' of the Gallery, the window to the Monk's courtyard, and from the spaces above and to the side of this vertical, rooflit, incision. one looses a sense of what is real and reflected, This work occurs again in the Venice Beach Houses of Morphosis, and the work of Frank Ghery.
This interlock of space, and of Museum/House is also to be seen in Kettle's Yard Cambridge (Martin/Ede) and Loulsiana, Denmark (Bo and Wohlert). In all three cases the house, and collection expand, become display, and finally museum. Not simply museums of objects, but of the lives that inhabited them. In Lincoln's Inn we see a comprehensive design, the furnture, the house and the displays are Soanel’s work.
So crowded is the museum that the Apollo Belvedere contains a table, and behind every painting there is another awaiting display, This proves a success in the Gallery, since paintings can be viewed as though the pages of a book, lit by the floating roof, Never has this been done outside ATHENA.
The House as Museum was a concept of Soane’s, He intended Lincoln's Inn as study centre. This is highlighted by the students’ drawing room, which stands independent of the walls supported by the colonnade: A solution enabled by the technology of heating and by new materials (Iron) (5). This provides a formal route to the picture gallery, begun at Soane's bust, and allows light to penetrate down the sides and hence the space below is lit by light reflected from the objects displayed. The detachment of the students room is metaphorical. From this platform, with its lit drawing tables one is allowed a "Bird's eye view of the museum" (6). Here one is surrounded by maquettes of details from The Bank Of England, The drawers contain works by Soane and Dance. Below are many of Adam's drawings. Thus was this space designed for illumination, through study and lght. The inspiration was identity with and separation from the museum, and while there are views out, the room is not looked in upon. The most successful space in the building, it is an insertion similar to Foster at the RA, metal against stone, lightweight, freestanding and careful of how it touches the walls, light passes down its sides.
While there is passage beneath this aedicule, the space above is fixed. The character of bridge exists in the Study/ Dressing room. A tiny passage between Dining Room and Museum, and a metaphorical bridge, rooflit, windowed and mirrored on both sides, with external courtyards beyond. Here Soane could compose himself, and change character between teacher and host.
These rooms are a microcosm of the rooms on the rest of the floor. As befits a curatorial role Soane continually rehung the collections here, the dressing room is a miniature ‘Dome’, with the character of ‘museum’(7), the study with fireplace, and desk a continuation of the library/dining room, The view of the monument court shared with the dining and breakfast rooms and the monk's court with the museum, This space is then the suffusion of Soane's work and house. The collection here begins and ends his career, from a dog Kennel for The Bisihop of Derry, to the ceiling rose from the Masonic Hall (8).
The museum as a whole was Intended for the afterlife, it is Soane's epitaph/ Like an Egyptian King his collection carries on in his house. Like Prospero, Emperor of all he surveyed, his whole domain and life, with heaven above and death beneath.
Soane achieved this through Act Of Parliamentl and through documentary watercolours produced by his pupils, notably Gandy. Plans even included furniture, and Soane produced the first catalogue in 1835. (9) As the house became a museum it would loose the ability to change, to represent life. Soane sealed accounts of his business, his problems with his children and so on, opened thirty and sixty years after his death.(10)
The associations with death are common to the lower floor of the museum. The sarcophagus of Seti l, models for the Soane tomb and its weeping cherub, cork models of funerary monuments, even an artist’s human skeleton in one cupboard.
Heaven is represented skyward, all living rooms feel as though they were no top, and had nothing built upon them: Through Soane's inventive Ceiling forms. The building has not one roof level, but many. This character is seen ni the Dome, which is lit at its edges by yellow glass (to warm the marbles)(11) and by a clear rooflight. The spandrels below apparently free standing with sky above. This is a vertical version of Mies' horizontal universal space. It is also evident in the breakfast room, the lit walls, and mirrors suggest a tent between you and the sky. The lantern looking heavenward contains scenes from scripture. The room is, in Soane's catalogue; 'a succession of those fanciful effects which constitute the poetry of Architecture' (12). The clock in this room has the reverse top to the ceiling. Seen in much of Soane's work, developed from his Bank Of England, and taken by Scott from Bourgeois' mausoleum at Dulwich to form the K4, 5 and 6 G.P. O, telephone boxes.
Just as the Dining room was presided over by Soane's portrait so is the Dome by his bust. This space as the beginning of 'the museum', has the most complex spatial interpenetrations, and below contains the sarcophagus already mentioned, formed from single pieces of stone and purchased at great expense. The symbolism of NUT,(14) the vaulting heaven God, of birth and death as the sun rises and sets was unknown in Soane's day, nor could they read the hieroglyphics, a guide to Tuat the Egyptian Underworld which circled the country and took the sun at night. Allusions to the plan of the (with)drawing room, so modelled because of site constraints, or the pendentive dome of the breakfast room are certainly not Soane's. (15).
The symbolism that was meant, the Monk's Parlour is altogether weaker, a joke almost. Padre Giovanni, (16) is a reworking of Soane's own history, the hermit, quite different from others of his day such as Nash. The collection was acquired while Clerk Of Works, and representative of an eclectic, but nonetheless respectful treatment of the past. Summerson refers to a draft of Soane's unlocked in 1866 supposedly written at some future date about "the residence of a great architect who suffered for his originality and integrity, was abused even by his own kin, and died of a broken heart" (17)
The stairs celebrate 'passing' with a Shakespeare recess, and the life of the occupants; Mrs Conduitt and Soane. They are cantilevered stone and asymmetrical because fo the plan. They lack grandeur, and have a domestic quality. Clearly the museum is everything. Indeed much is collected in the museum, the decoration is the collection, and things are largely positioned where they came from, and lit as they were. Entablatures at the top and coffins below. This approach has become standard for new museums beginning with the Burrell Collection by Gasson.
The (with)Drawing room on the first floor had a loggia, this became glassed (18) as the house became introverted. The shutter recesses were taken over by books, and a gallery of Architects created. Soane therefore fits himself into a line of works; through Palladio, Jones, Vanbrugh, Piranesi, Adam, and Dance. Next door is a repository of that work. (19). The room bears Soane's decorative style, mirrors, ceiling and a yelow light from undisclosed sources, but is altogether too boudoir in conception after the museum proper. For this reason I am glad that much of 'the House' is inaccessible.
Refs:
1c p11 & d p474
2 c p10
3 a p13
4 d p13
5 a p44
6 a p23
7 a p18
8 a p20-22
9 a p11
10 a p75
11 a p46
12 c p34
13 c p13
14 a p41 & p42
15 Lecture ‘The house as the world again, Eamon Canniffe Feb ’88
16 a p34
17 c p22
18 a p56
19 a p56
SOURCE MATERIAL
a. A NEW DESCRIPTION OF SIR JOHN SOANE'S MUSEUM, Sir John Summerson Publ. The Trustees, London, 1955
b. A SHORT DESCRIPTION OF SIR JOHN ETC. as above
c. JOHN SOANE ARCHITECTURAL MONOGRAPH, Summerson et al. Publ. Academy Editions, London, 1983
d. ARCHITECTURE IN BRITIAN 1530 - 1830, John Summerson Publ. The Pelican History Of Art, 1953
BIBLIOGRAPHY,
Works by Soane:
Designs in Architecture, consisting of Plans, Elevations and Sections for Temples, Baths, Casinos, Pavilions, Garden-Seats, Obelisks and Other Buildings, London, 1778
As above, republished, Farnborough, Hants., Gregg International 1968
John Soane, ( with contributions by J .Summerson et al.), London, Academy Editions, 1983 (Architectural Monographs)
Plans, Elevations & Sections of Buildings erected in the Counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, etc. London, 1788
As above, republished, Farnborough, Gregg, 1971
Sketches in Architecture, etc. London, 1793
As above, facsimile, Farnborough, Gregg, 1971
Description o f the House and Museum, etc, London, Private Publ., 1832 Enlarged 1835-6
Memoirs of the Professional Life of an Architect. London, Private Publ., 1835
Works on Soane:
Bolton, A . T .
ed, Ihe Works o f John Seane, R.A. London, 1924
ed, The Portrait of Sir John Soane London, 1927
ed, Lectures o n Architecture London, 1929
Architectural Education A Century Ago: Being an Account of the Office of Sir John Soane, etc. London, Soane Museum, 1923
Life & Work a Century Ago: An Outline of the Career of Sir John Soane, etc. London, Soane Museum, 1922
Du Prey, P. de la R.
John Soane's Architectural Education. New York, Garland, 1977
(Outstanding dissertations in t h e Fine Arts)
John Soane, the making o f an architect. Chicago, Univ. of Chicago, 1983
Stroud, D.
The Architecture of Sir John Soane, etc, London, Studio, 1961
Sir John Soane, Architect, London Faber 1984
Summerson, J.
Sir John Soane 1753-1837. London, Art and Technics, 1952
A New Description of Sirt John Soane’s Museum etc, London, Soane Museum, 1955
Articles:
Bolton, A.T.
' Sir John Soane, R.A., F.R.S., F,S.A., 1753-1837', R.1.B.A. Journal, 44., 1937 pp. 273-75
Kirklington, J.
'The Soanian Sonnet', Interiors, April 1982, pp. 80-9
Summerson, J.
'Le Tombeau de Sir John Soane', Revue de l'Art, Nº 30, 1975
'Sir John Soane and The Furniture Of Death', Architectural Review, March 1978
'At Sir John Soane's Museum', Pidgeon Audio Video, PAV 792
Teysot, G .
'John Soane and the Birth of Style', Oppositions, 14, 1978, pp. 67-75