The Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum invite you to a reception and talk and private view
The Origin and Progress of Architecture
According to Sir John Soane
by Professor David Watkin
25 January 2007
At Sir John Soane’s Museum, 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2A 3BP
Reception at 6.30pm - talk starts at 7.15pm (ends approximately 8.15pm)
Comparative drawing of St Peter's and the Pantheon, Rome, the Radcliffe Library, Oxford, and Soane's Rotunda at the
Bank of England by Charles Tyrrell, October 1814
This talk, assembled by Professor David Watkin is a one-lecture summary of the twelve lectures Sir
John Soane delivered between 1809 and 1836 at the Royal Academy where he was appointed Professor
of Architecture in 1806. Professor Watkin will include no words in his lecture that were not spoken by
Soane, and will show specially-taken slides of many of the stunningly beautiful watercolours with
which Soane illustrated his lectures. These are also the subject of a new exhibition, curated by
Professor Watkin: ‘Visions of World Architecture: Soane’s Royal Academy Lecture Illustrations’.
Guests will be free to enjoy a special private view of this exhibition after the talk.
Beginning with a striking image of Noah’s ark, compared with a modern man-of-war, they include the
Hindu Temple at Elephanta near Bombay, Greek and Roman architecture, as well as Renaissance and
Baroque, and are accompanied by many tart criticisms of contemporary buildings like Smirke's
Convent Garden Opera House. Soane also included illustrations of his work at the Bank of England,
and of his own house and Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, built between 1792 and 1824, with which
the lecture concludes.
David Watkin’s book Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures (1996)
won the Banister Fletcher Award. He is Professor of the History of Architecture at the University of
Cambridge and a Fellow of Peterhouse. He is Vice-Chairman of the Georgian Group, an Honorary
Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
Places are strictly limited. Please rsvp to Mike Nicholson (020 7440 4241
mnicholson@soane.org.uk) to reserve places. There is no charge for patrons or their guests.
The Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum invite you to a reception and a special private view of
the major new exhibition at Tate Britain
Hogarth
Guests are invited to join an optional tour of
Hogarth with its curator – Christine Riding.
William Hogarth, An Election (1754-55), I An Election Entertainment
Tuesday 13 February 2007, Tate Britain, (Manton Entrance)
Champagne & Canapés - 6.30pm - 9.00pm
Curator-led tour of exhibition at 7.15pm – 8.00pm
Witty, satirical, subversive and hugely talented, William Hogarth (1697-1764) remains one of the most
fascinating and innovative artists from the eighteenth century. This superb exhibition is the most comprehensive
showing of the artist’s work in living memory and incorporates the full range of Hogarth’s work, including the
12 paintings from the Soane Museum that comprise the two great moral series A Rake’s Progress and An
Election.
The exhibition demonstrates that Hogarth wasn’t only a brilliant satirist, as it showcases every aspect of his
multi-faceted career: his remarkable paintings, ranging from elegant conversation pieces to salacious brothel
scenes; his vibrant drawings and sketches; and the numerous engraved works for which he is most famous today,
including Gin Lane and Beer Street. His society portraits easily rival those of Gainsborough or Reynolds, and the
variety and energy of his output is outstanding.
No other artist’s work has come to define a period of British history as powerfully and enduringly as Hogarth’s.
The exhibition explores an artist who was strikingly modern in character, confronting subjects and themes – the
city, sexuality, manners, social integration, crime, political corruption, charity and patriotism– that continue to
preoccupy us today. Works by living contemporary artists inspired by Hogarth are also on display, including
Jake and Dinos Chapman and Paula Rego.
Places are strictly limited so please rsvp to Mike Nicholson (020 7440 4241
mnicholson@soane.org.uk) if you would like to attend.
The Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum invite you to a reception and lecture
'Athens - or Sparta?
Another look at J.M. Gandy's Spartan fantasia
by Professor Paul Cartledge
28 February 2007
At Sir John Soane’s Museum, 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2A 3BP
Reception at 6.30pm - talk starts at 7.15pm (ends approximately 8.15pm)
The Persian Porch and the place of consultation of the Lacedemonians by J.M. Gandy 1816
Coinciding with my Cambridge colleague David Watkins's 'Visions of World Architecture' exhibition (which
will be open for guests to view), this lecture aims to focus attention on one other extraordinary vision of world
architecture, by one of Soane’s most distinguished pupils and followers, Joseph Michael Gandy. It is a vision
painted in watercolour in 1816 of ancient Sparta - a city as notorious in Gandy's day as it had been in antiquity
precisely for ‘not’ being an architecturally significant urban site (or ruin). Gandy's imaginative reconstruction of
a supposed ancient Spartan cityscape is thus strictly a fantasia - but it may for that very reason be fitted also
within a very powerful, still resonant architectural tradition: that of Utopia.
'Utopia', the word, was coined by Sir Thomas More exactly 300 years earlier, in 1516. It was a classicizing
coinage, but also crucially ambiguous. Ancient Sparta, as this lecture will show, is a major contributor, perhaps
even the original source, of the entire Utopian tradition of writing and visual creation. Gandy's contribution to
that tradition, which salutarily reminds us that Athens and Rome were not the only two ancient cities to fire the
modern English artistic imagination, merits our renewed reflection and reconsideration.
Paul Cartledge is Professor of Greek History at Cambridge University and a fellow of Clare College. A world
expert on Athens and Sparta in the Classical Age, he was chief historical consultant for the BBC TV series The
Greeks and the Channel 4 series The Spartans, presented by Bettany Hughes and has recently published
‘Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World’.
Places are strictly limited. Please rsvp to Mike Nicholson (020 7440 4241
mnicholson@soane.org.uk) to reserve places. There is no charge for patrons or their guests.