drawing
- Museum number
- 1958,0712.6
- Description
-
Landscape with temples; a wooded landscape, mountains in the distance to left, a road in foreground with a row of figures to right, at centre, two soldiers, a pine tree to left
Watercolour and bodycolour, strengthened with gum
- Production date
- 1771-1843
- Dimensions
-
Height: 444 millimetres
-
Width: 669 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- Stainton 1985
Gandy was trained as an architect first in James Wyatt's office, subsequently at the Royal Academy schools (where he was awarded a Gold Medal), and then in the office of Sir John Soane. He practised with little success, however, for he belonged to the generation that came to professional maturity during the French Revolutionary wars, when resources and attention were diverted from architectural patronage. As Sir John Summerson, who gives an account of Gandy's few executed buildings (these were, as one would expect, in the neo-classic, Soanesque style) commenced, "there was too much to think about, to little to do. It was an age for poets rather than architects" ('Heavenly Mansions', 1949, pp 111 ff). Gandy took to making drawings of architectural fantasies, of which this is a characteristic example, supported by Soane who employed him to make drawings of his more imaginative and unrealisable designs as they would have looked if they had been carried out. Gandy's Pandemonium, 1805, anticipates the grandiose architectural sublime of John Martin.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1968 BM, Piranesi, no.54
1985, BM, British Landscape Watercolours 1600-1860, no.72
- Acquisition date
- 1958
- Acquisition notes
- This item has an uncertain or incomplete provenance for the years 1933-45. The British Museum welcomes information and assistance in the investigation and clarification of the provenance of all works during that era.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1958,0712.6