Here are the answers to last week’s Really Easy Quiz on the Architecture of Dulwich Picture Gallery.
Soane's plan of DPG 1811
1. Who designed Dulwich Picture Gallery? Sir John Soane – 1811
2. Dulwich Picture Gallery wasn’t just built as a picture gallery. It had 2 other functions too. What were they? (One of the different functions remains today) A mausoleum and almshouses for 6 old women. The special exhibition rooms are where the old women used to live. You can see their windows, some bricked up, and bricked up doorways on the outside of the building on the mausoleum side. In the picture below too.
Soane's drawing of a DPG chimney
3. What are the strange objects on the roof of the gallery? Well, there are an awful lot of them, but I mean like the one on the left. Chimney pots. The old women needed heat! A Rembrandt on one side of the wall and a fireplace on the other. Well, many of the paintings now in the Gallery would probably have hung above fireplaces.
2. Mausoleum and almshouses. 4. Same roof shapes
4. Why on earth is there an old red phone box in the disabled car park? In 1924 the Royal Fine Arts Commission invited 3 respected architects to submit designs for a telephone box. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott won. He was a trustee of the Sir John Soane’s museum at the time, and the shape of the roof of the DPG mausoleum influenced his design. The phone box doesn’t work now, but it is often used to store cafe deliveries.
5. Which architect designed the new build which opened in 2000? Rick Mather. He also did the extensions of the Wallace Collection and the National Maritime Museum.
6. Why is the new bit (café etc) on College Road built in red brick when the Gallery is in yellow brick? (So many people ask that) Before the new build there was a Victorian red brick wall on College Road. Red brick was used to retain this effect. The cafe, Linbury Room etc in effect were just a thickening of this wall.
snakes in the mausoleum
7. Why are there snakes on the ceiling of the mausoleum? Snakes are a symbol of eternity. They shed their skins leaving an empty replica of their physical body behind. There are no Christian symbols in the mausoleum. The things on the vaults that look like angels are Classical figures of victory.
8. There is a fourth empty coffin in the mausoleum with no name on it. Who was it intended for? Well, this is the trick question. Because nobody really knows. There have been many theories – perhaps Soane himself wanted to be buried with his friends. Dr. Paul Mathews, in his recent research, suggested that it could have been intended for a very close friend of Bourgeois, a wealthy widow, Elizabeth Glover, who probably supported him for many years until his death.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mrs. Margaret Desenfans (private collection)
9. Who are the busts of on the empty coffin? Three occupied coffins, 2 busts. Well they are of the men of course. Although without the extra funds that Margaret Desenfans supplied DPG could not have been built, she, being a woman, was not entitled to have a bust of herself. There is a rather lovely portrait of her with a squiffy eye by Reynolds though, in the main gallery.
Rembrandt Jacob III de Gheyn
10. Why is the Gallery in the Guinness Book of Records? Its the take-away Rembrandt. The beautiful little portrait of Jacob de Gheyn, probably worth more per square centimeter than any other painting in the Gallery, has been stolen and returned 4 times. More than any other work of art in the world. That has to be the stuff of another post.
Another post about Sir John Soane by Tim Knox, director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum
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