The eminent architect and collector John Soane (1753–1837) stated that he arranged the works in his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields ‘as studies for my own mind.’ All who have visited this rich and eclectic gathering of works of art in their extraordinary home will have been struck by the seemingly infinite number of visual ideas, mirroring the mind of the creator of this illustrious museum. Indeed, the mirrors seen in many nooks and crannies invite further speculative contemplation, reflecting light and at the same time paradoxically making the house more mysterious. The subtitle of the book under review is a clever pun on ‘reflections’. The German architect and designer Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) noted after his visit in 1826, ‘this house … contains a great number of casts … all exhibited in the riskiest manner, in small spaces lit from above and the side … Medieval, antique and modern works are intermingled at every level … Little deceptions everywhere.’ (quoted on p. 43 of the present book).

The bafflement of visitors must surely have been Soane’s intention. Unlike the Soane Museum’s older and much larger sibling, the British Museum, the collections in Lincoln’s Inn Fields embody the personality and genius of one remarkable individual. Bruce Boucher’s book succeeds in combining a very human biography of John Soane and his family with a sensitive summary of the collections and most importantly the building in which they are housed, created by their effective progenitor, from the Tivoli Recess to the Monk’s Parlour.

This review will concentrate on the sculptures in the collection, but readers may well want to consult Boucher’s book for his elucidating comments on the paintings and architectural models displayed in the house. Similarly, Soane’s rather unhappy personal life, including the deterioration of his relationship with his sons, as well as his wife’s premature death, are sensitively recorded in Boucher’s text.

Soane was a great friend of John Flaxman (1755–1826), and the collection comprises a number of plaster casts and models by Flaxman, partly thanks to the sculptor’s sister-in-law, Maria Denman, who presented Soane with some of the models after Flaxman’s death. He favoured British artists, including Thomas Banks (1735–1805). Banks’s plaster model for the moving effigy of the child Penelope Boothby is displayed in the museum; the tomb for which this is a model is in St. Oswald’s Church, Ashbourne, Derbyshire. Sir Richard Westmacott (1775–1856) is likewise represented in the collection. Soane maintained strong links with the Royal Academy; all the sculptors whose work he acquired were fellow Royal Academicians, Sir Francis Chantrey (1781–1841) executed the fine bust of him in the Museum, and became a trustee after Soane’s death.

It is difficult to do justice to this compendious book in a short review. As always with publications produced by Yale, the design and layout, along with the quality of the illustrations, are outstanding. The text is clear and founded on careful scholarship, while the academic roots underlying the story are there for serious students wishing to follow up references. Boucher, the recently departed director of the Soane Museum, recalls with respect and affection his predecessors, Sir John Summerson, Dorothy Stroud, Margaret Richardson and Peter Thornton, as well as his colleague Helen Dorey, the current Inspectress and Deputy Director of the Museum. This is a beautiful book, faithfully reflecting the splendours of the house and its collection, certainly a desirable volume for anyone with an interest in the man and his exceptional museum.

 

 

 

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