George Dance the Younger – a bicentennial celebration

Born in 1741, George Dance studied architecture in Italy from 1758-64. Initially joining his father’s architectural practice on his return to London, Dance then succeeded him as Clerk of the City Works in 1768. His long and prolific career of 1764-1816 spanned the neoclassical movement and the Greek Revival and he experimented with and shaped both styles. Dance accepted apprentices into his office, shaping the careers of major architects including John Soane, who was apprenticed to Dance in 1768-71. Dance was also a founder member of the Royal Academy [RA].

There is little surviving correspondence from Dance and almost nothing to reveal his thoughts on architecture. Moreover, few of his buildings survive. Yet his legacy is notable, thanks largely to his surviving drawings at the Soane Museum. These were the last great addition to Soane’s collection, on 18 November 1836, just weeks before Soane died. Soane’s accounts show that he paid Dance’s son, Sir Charles Webb Dance, £500 for the drawings collection. Along too came a handsome cabinet, known as ‘The Shrine’ which had been made to contain the drawings. The Shrine can be admired in the North Drawing Room at the Soane Museum and still contains the Dance collection, comprising an invaluable record of the work of George Dance the Younger, a towering figure in architectural history.

For more information on the Dance drawings collection, please see the online catalogue here.

Unknown English cabinet maker
‘The Dance Cabinet’ or ‘Shrine’ in the North Drawing Room, Sir John Soane’s Museum, London
c.1800-25, SM L110

During his Grand Tour of 1758-64, spent principally in Italy, Dance received training in architectural draughtsmanship from Nicolo Giansimone, the master of architecture at the Accademia di San Luca, Rome. Clearly this training was successful, as in 1763 he won the prestigious Gold Medal at the Parma Academy with a design for a ‘Public Gallery for Statues, Pictures etc.’. The jury's report on Dance's prize-winning entry stated that:

The beauty of all its forms, the grandeur and just proportion of the edifice, recal[l] to mind and represent to the eye the magnificent monuments of the ancients .... Every thing [sic] in his design appears suited to its place; it would be difficult to take away from the decorations, or to add to them, without impairing the effect; they are numerous without confusion, and suited to the subject.

Winning the Parma Academy Gold Medal so young proved Dance’s architectural credibility and skill. He returned to London a year later, in triumph.

All Hallows, a small church built against the Wall of the City of London, was first recorded in 1120. A new, larger church was commissioned in May 1765 and five architects submitted designs. Only recently returned from his Grand Tour, Dance’s scheme was selected and became his first commission. The speed of progress may explain why Dance’s father helped to prepare the contract drawings, including this one, just days after the church had been commissioned. The foundation stone was laid only two months later, and the finished church is one of few Dance buildings to survive.

Dance’s design gives a single-cell church (no side aisles) derived from Roman bathhouse architecture. It has been hailed for the innovation of omitting an architrave or cornice – considered very daring at the time – and led, in 1951, to John Summerson, Soane Museum Curator, claiming that All Hallows ‘may justly be called the first strictly neoclassical building in Britain’. This preference of ornamental omission was carried to a greater extreme by Dance’s pupil Soane, resulting in his noted attenuated version of neoclassicism.

In 1768, Dance succeeded his father as Clerk of the City Works and remained in that post until his retirement in 1816. In 1767, Parliament provided £50,000 for a new prison, and Newgate Gaol was Dance’s first major scheme carried out in his new role. It was also his best-known building. Begun in May 1770, completion of the building lagged until July 1785 owing to problems with the building’s materials. There was also fire damage during the Gordon Riots in 1780. This bird’s-eye view shows the Gaol as it was executed, with three courts, dividing male and female prisoners and debtors. Its massive, rusticated walls, with no windows, and sculpted shackles, eloquently convey the building’s purpose. This clear purpose of a building, or ‘the poetry of architecture’, is an important quality in Dance’s work, and is best seen in his scheme for Newgate.

As Clerk of the City Works, Dance carried out various town-planning schemes. Almost all of these were sited either in the City of London, or on land elsewhere which belonged to the City. Alfred Place, running alongside Tottenham Court Road, was part of the City of London’s estate and in 1801, Dance was asked to design a new layout and houses there. In this drawing the plots are washed alternately in pink and yellow, an unusual but clear means of graphic communication which Dance repeated elsewhere. Although this is Dance’s last surviving design for Alfred Place, it was altered in execution, with narrower plots and the house frontages changed. The original layout, with crescents to the North and South, still exists, but all of Dance’s original buildings have been replaced at different times.

Given Dance’s role as Clerk of the City Works, it is unsurprising that he was interested in the Bank of England, not least because the Bank’s architect was his former pupil, John Soane. In 1801-2, Dance designed street improvements for the area around the Bank and north to Finsbury Square. The form of Soane’s Bank exterior was heavily influenced by Dance’s town planning, including Soane’s famous Tivoli Corner, which was intended as the focal point of Dance’s new cityscape. Several times, Soane consulted Dance about the engineering and ornamentation of the Bank, for example, in 1794, regarding the structure of the Rotunda. There is even evidence that the two collaborated, as illustrated by this drawing. Here Dance draws in pen and Soane in pencil. This unexecuted design is for ornamentation to one of the Bank’s exterior walls. Although the executed design (below) was a little more elaborate, it clearly evolved through conversation with Dance. 

Soane office
Record drawing of the Lothbury and Bartholomew Lane screen wall, Bank of England, London
ND, SM 12/1/2

While no drawings by Dance survive for this building, Soane’s office produced this drawing to illustrate his RA lectures. The Shakespeare Gallery was built in 1788-89 for John Boydell (1719-1804), an engraver and print publisher. Boydell commissioned paintings of Shakespearean scenes which were hung in a suite of interconnected top-lit first-floor galleries – foreshadowing Soane’s Dulwich Picture Gallery – and these were engraved for sale on the ground floor. The façade included a sculpture by Thomas Banks representing ‘The Apotheosis of Shakespeare’, as well as Dance’s celebrated ammonite capitals. These consisted of ammonites and leaves, drawing inspiration from both nature and architecture to form a capital as innovative and British as the Bard himself. Picture galleries were rare at this date, but Dance had relevant experience from his unbuilt gallery design for the Parma Academy. The Shakespeare Gallery opened in June 1789, but Boydell suffered bankruptcy, and the building was sold in 1805 and then demolished in 1868.

George Dance the Younger
Royal College of Surgeons, 41-42 (now 38-43) Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, plan and sections for the museum and anatomy theatre
1805-7, SM D5/3/23

In 1805-13, Dance rebuilt the Royal College of Surgeons. He started by redeveloping some outbuildings on a small plot to the south into an anatomy theatre and museum to house a large collection of anatomical specimens collected by John Hunter (1728-93). Dance’s building was demolished in 1834, so it is difficult to know which of the surviving designs came to fruition. However, this drawing shows the ‘approved’ scheme for the anatomy theatre. Earlier anatomy theatres had been octagonal and oval while Dance’s theatre was square – making best use of the limited space – but resulted in an awkward arrangement for the rear rows of seating. As we can see here, the museum’s principal space was divided into three top-lit bays – again reminiscent of Dulwich – and contained glazed cases. Below, were vaulted museum storage spaces. Dance’s museum was a great success, but by 1833, accessions to the museum demanded larger premises.

The pressure of City work meant that Dance accepted few rural projects which necessitated lengthy travel. However, he did undertake various country house projects, perhaps lured by the sociability of his visits, or by the buildings being isolated and offering more stylistic freedom than in confined urban environments. At Coleorton in 1802-8, Dance worked for his friend, Sir George Beaumont, who had relocated there to oversee his local coalfields. Dance proposed using the castle style – the innovative precursor to the Gothic Revival – to enlarge the original sixteenth- or seventeenth-century manor. Stylistically, this design was well ahead of its time, showing a three-storey castellated and turreted house. But in the plan, the proposed additions shown in pink are neoclassical, with a circular eating room with apses (semicircular recesses). However, this design was not executed, and after two years of indecision, Dance finally enlarged the manor to a different design. Coleorton was altered in the 1840s and 1860s and is currently divided into flats.

Dance was a sociable man. He played musical instruments and drew for the amusement of others. This included satirical drawings and portraits. Some were published, and over 200 of his portraits survive in various collections, including four at the Soane Museum. Dance’s portraiture style was meticulous, usually depicting the subject seated, at half-length, and produced in short strokes with hatching, usually in pencil and sometimes with colour in wash or chalk. Dance described his portraits as ‘relaxation from the severer studies and more laborious employment of professional life’. Between being widowed in 1791 and left to care for three young sons, and his busy professional activities, Dance’s life may have been onerous, and drawing portraits offered relaxation and sociability. This informal likeness of George Soane (1789-1860), the younger son of John and Eliza Soane, was probably produced at a social gathering: as Soane’s architectural master, Dance became a close family friend.

Curated by Frances Sands, Curator of Drawings and Books