Design for the Interior of Queen Mary’s Closet with Panels
Creator(s): Grinling Gibbons 1648-1721, painted panels possibly by James Bogdani (c.1660-1724; see Notes)
Date: Undated, but probably c.1693-94
Accession Number: SM 110/65
Dimensions: 315mm x 446mm
Materials: Graphite under-drawing, with pen and brown ink additions for freehand profiles of mouldings and ceiling cove, and coloured gouache for paintings on wall panels, with some splashing of gouache on sheet laid paper
Location: Sir John Soane's Museum
Credit Line (copyright notice for material) : © Sir John Soane's Museum
Online Catalogue Entry : http://collections.soane.org/OBJECT322
NOTES ON THE ARTWORK
This unfinished drawing of a design for the interior of Queen Mary’s Closet reveals Gibbons’s preparatory technique of drawing the lines of all the mouldings in fine graphite before adding the ink lines, and starting the ink drawing with the freehand moulding profiles. It is a more precise version of the technique in the preparatory designs for doors in the king’s apartments (110/56 and 57 [Design for Doorcase with Foliated Pilaster Frame and Design for King’s Bedchamber Doorcase with Pediment on this website]) and confirms Gibbons’s ability to draw out entire wall elevations himself. The elevation also demonstrates that the artist responsible for the painted wall panels was handed the drawing before Gibbons applied his pen and ink lines and washed shading. Like Hawksmoor, Gibbons would have added the wash before the ink lines.
Further research is needed on the author of the painted landscape panels (and other panels). The most likely candidate is James Bogdani, who was paid (as ‘James Bogdain’) for ‘work by him done in the Queen’s Looking Glasse Closett in the Thames Gallery in 1694’ (Wren Society, IV, p. 28).
Literature: Wren Society, IV, pl. 46, bottom.
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
Design for the Interior of Queen Mary's Closet with Panels © Sir John Soane's Museum
