[SOANE, John] - Lot 137

[SOANE, John] Description of the House and Museum on the North side of Lincoln's-inn-fields, the Residence of John Soane, Professor of Architecture in the Royal Academy London, James Moyes, 1830 ENVOILED FROM JOHN SOANE TO WILLIAM TURNER: THE WHOLE STORY OF A MUSEUM AND A FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN TWO ARTISTS ORIGINAL EDITION In-4 (303 x 242 mm). ILLUSTRATION: 17 engraved plates (3 plans, 12 lithographs and 2 engravings). ENVOI autograph : To J. M. William Turner Esqr. R.A. from the Author, with sentiments of the most sincere friendship & respect for his inimitable talent CONTEMPORARY BINDING. Fawn calf spine and corners, purplish percaline boards, title throughout. PROVENANCE: Joseph Mallord William Turner (consignment; bookplate) -- Percy William Pegge (bookplate on second flyleaf). Some foxing. Epidermures John Soane and William Turner had known each other since 1802, when they were both elected members of the Royal Academy of Arts. The former taught architecture, the latter perspective. Their mutual admiration was coupled with a shared passion for fishing: "No one was a more frequent or welcome guest of the Soanes over this period than Turner. The two men's shared love of fishing offered long companionable hours passed together on river banks. Neither man a natural intellectual, they found common ground in their dogged investigations of architecture. Soane periodically lent Turner money" (Gillian Darley, p. 163). But it was after the death of Turner's patron and friend, Walter Fawkes (1769-1825), that their ties became closer. William Turner found the space, solitude and company he needed to pursue his work in the home of his friend, architect and collector John Soane, at 12 Lincoln's Inn Fields in London. John Soane had bought his famous house in 1792. He first used it as his home and library, then enlarged it by integrating the two adjacent properties to house his growing collection of antiques. The prosperity of his architectural practice enabled him to collect unique objects, including the sarcophagus of Sety I, Roman bronzes from Pompeii, numerous sculptures and paintings by Canaletto and William Hogarth. Soane's acquisitions often came from auctions, and many objects belonged to prestigious lines of collectors, such as Lord Bessborough, Lord Mendip, Lord Berwick, Robert Adam and Piranesi. Lincoln's Inn Fields was then (and still is) one of the most extraordinary London interiors of the period. Visitors pass through a relatively banal doorway, before the house tightens around them and pushes them into ever smaller, more confined spaces. At the heart of the house is a wide corridor filled with marble busts and antique fragments of all kinds, leaving no room from floor to ceiling. The house is as full of detail as a sketch by Turner during his Roman period (1819-1820). One of the few commissions Turner undertook in the second half of the 1820s was for John Soane. This painting, known as Forum Romanum for Mr Soane's Museum (now at Tate Britain, room T7), is essential in Turner's career. He painted what acerbic critics called the "intolerable yellow hue" that was to become so characteristic of his painting: "wether boats or buildings, water or watermen, houses or horses, all is yellow, yellow, nothing but yellow, violently contrasted with blue" (quoted by Gillian Darley). Soane honorably paid Turner's asking price, but strangely refused the painting, claiming that "the picture did not suit the place or the place the picture". Turner didn't take Soane's receipt, and took his refusal in stride: "I like candour and my having said that if you didn't like it when done I would put it down in my book of Time" (ibid.). But John Soane had his ground-floor salon repainted in the same shade of yellow as Turner's, which was to become an ever-increasing feature of the painter's canvases. Turner himself painted the walls of his own small salon yellow. Turner yellow" was born in John Soane's house at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The influence of Soane, and his collection, on Turner's painting is obvious. Their conversations revolved around archaeological details found in Turner's paintings. Two days before the Forum Romanum exhibition at the Royal Academy, in May 1826, Turner wrote to Soane: "I have altered the inscription upon the Arch of Titus and it is said to be now quite right". Other pieces from Soane's antique collection found their way into Turner's paintings, such as the bridge in Anc