‘Drawing buildings: observation, invention and the architect in Early Modern England’.

Exhibition focusing on the Thorpe Album (Sir John Soane’s Museum) and the Smythson Collection (RIBA) co-curated with Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner (Senior Curator Architecture and Design, V&A).This exhibition will focus on the practice and meaning of architectural drawing in England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, examining the two most significant groups of drawings to survive from that period: the Thorpe Album at Sir John Soane’s Museum and the Smythson drawings at the RIBA. These drawings are exceptional survivals that have much to reveal about architectural culture in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period, when architectural drawing practices were developing hand in hand with the formation of the professional architect.

The proposed exhibition arises from two concurrent cataloguing projects about architectural drawings in early modern England: the re-cataloguing by Manolo Guerci of the Thorpe Album at Sir John Soane’s Museum, and the re-cataloguing by Olivia Horsfall Turner of the Smythson Collection at the RIBA. Cataloguing projects are often seen as dry and academic exercises, but, as the Soane Museum is well aware and has demonstrated through its own extensive cataloguing initiatives, they generate new discoveries and fresh interpretations, and demonstrate the importance of object-based learning. An exhibition to present the fruits of these two, dovetailing projects will draw attention to the collections and to their continuing relevance for our historical understanding.

The Thorpe Album

First catalogued by Sir John Summerson in 1964-66, the ‘Book of Architecture of John Thorpe‘ (c.1565-1655) consists of some 295 drawings ranging primarily from the 1590s to the 1620s and covering 168 buildings, mainly but not only English, and amongst the greatest of the period. The drawings include plans, elevations, some full-size sections of mouldings, and a depiction of the five orders derived from Hans Blum’s 1550 treatise on the orders. The importance of the Thorpe album and its potential for a broader understanding of the period cannot be overstated. John Summerson described it as ‘perhaps the most important relic in existence of architectural drawings and designs in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I’ (Summerson, 1964-66). It is in fact one of only two such collections extant. The other is the Smythson Collection at the Royal Institute of British Architects, it too first catalogued in the 1960s, by Mark Girouard, and currently being reassessed and re-catalogued. This attests to the timely nature of the project, enriched by the potential of sharing expertise. The re-cataloguing of the Thorpe Album will result in a new comprehensive critical edition and catalogue available as an online, open access, high-resolution/colour facility, hosted on the website of the Sir John Soane’s Museum.

The Smythson Drawings

First catalogued by Mark Girouard in 1962 and containing around 170 drawings by both Robert and John Smythson, the Smythson Collection in the RIBA is notable for being the only other such collection of architectural drawings in England. The majority of drawings date from the 1580s to the 1630s, in much the same way as Thorpe’s do, and were made by Robert (d.1614) and his son John (d.1634). Again like Thorpe’s drawings, the Smythson drawings include surveys of existing and then-contemporary buildings as well as prospective designs, both executed and unexecuted. They are of central significance for British architectural history of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, for the history of architectural representation, and for an understanding of the role of drawing in the creation of the identity and authority of the early-modern architect. Like Manolo Guerci’s project on Thorpe’s drawings, Olivia Horsfall Turner’s work on the Smythson collection will result in a new critical edition cum catalogue.

The exhibition

The exhibition will bring together both collections for the first time, in conjunction with other relevant material, including prints, additional drawings and drawing instruments. As a bound volume the Thorpe Album presents specific challenges for display, but we are confident that high-quality facsimiles – all drawings have already been professionally digitised – can more than satisfactorily amplify the number of Thorpe drawings that can be viewed at one time. The Smythson drawings have all recently been conserved and remounted, so the costs of conservation and display preparation for those items would be minimal.

The exhibition will address the following topics:

• The role of drawn evidence and the development of the architectural profession in the Elizabethan and early Jacobean period, alongside architectural, artistic and societal changes in England and beyond.

• The role of drawings within the broader intellectual context of the relationship between building and drawing from around 1580 to around 1630.

• The significance of these collections as unique case studies of the practical and associational value of drawing within early-modern architectural culture.

• The relationship between print and drawing culture.

• The role of drawings in the transmission of ideas, including classicism.

• The challenges of representing buildings within the emerging profession of the ‘architect’.

• The relationship between drawings and early-modern concepts of invention and ingenuity.

• The collection history of the two groups of drawings and how they have come to survive.

At a time when there is a resurgence of interest in hand drawing against the backdrop of digitally aided drawing, this exhibition will offer visitors to the Soane an exceptional opportunity to discover these two significant collections and to learn what they reveal about the development of British architectural culture in a European context.