The Soane style in London

Author: By Christine Temin, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, May 18, 1997

Page: M1

Section: Travel

Soane, who lived from 1753 to 1837, was one of England's greatest architects. He was also a fanatic collector and famous eccentric. His house in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London has been a museum since the early 19th century, at first an informal one where the owner simply showed his stuff to interested callers, a courteous practice common in England's great country houses. Then, in 1833, an Act of Parliament officially established the museum under a board of trustees. Soane's will stipulated that the contents of the house be kept as nearly as possible as they were at his death, a wish that has been fulfilled.

In his day, Soane was considered a controversial genius; after his death, his work languished unappreciated. Many of his London buildings were torn down or rebuilt -- including most of his magnum opus, the Bank of England. But his influence is immense and lasting. It was the tomb Soane designed for his family in St. Pancras Gardens that inspired the design for the classic red telephone kiosk that the British -- shame on them! -- have decided to trade in for something far less distinctive. And Soane has influenced contemporary postmodernist architects who appreciate the multiple layers and meanings and visual tricks in his work.

Soane used mirrors with a magician's skill, in niches, on walls and even furniture, to multiply and distort spaces. He shaped ceilings into canopy domes that look like billowing cloth. He loved the effect of light streaming down, which reminded him of roofless ruins, and so he pioneered the use of top lighting that has now been picked up by many modern museums. He loved confusing visitors, and so interior walls would open to reveal hidden rooms beyond, and the view through one glass table in his museum went two stories down, thanks to a hole in the floor. The Soane Museum is small but disorienting. It's easy to lose your way in it. It's also fun.

Of the relatively few Soane buildings that remain, fewer still are open to the public. Because of the renaissance of interest in his style, four London area Soane sites that are open have banded together to produce a helpful pamphlet full of vital stats. They are Sir John Soane's Museum, the Bank of England, Pitshanger Manor, and the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Although the Bank of England occupied Soane from 1788, when he was appointed its ``architect and surveyor,'' until his retirement in 1833, there is precious little left of his work to be seen at the huge, 3-acre complex. His Bank Stock Office, reconstructed in 1988 to his original design, is about the extent of it, along with a circle of caryatids in the rotunda. Nowadays, the stock office serves as part of the bank's fascinating little museum, which tells the story of the institution from its founding in 1694.

Infatuated with the romance of ruins he'd seen on an Italian trip in his youth, Soane had his watercolorist, Joseph Gandy, create a fantasy picture of the bank with roof disappeared and walls crumbling. Today, of course, the bank is intact, but not in the form designed by Soane. That Gandy picture may be fanciful, but it was prophetic as well.

Look over the edge of a huge hole cut in the floor of one passageway in the Soane Museum and you see right through to the cellar -- to the site of the huge stone sarcophagus of the Egyptian ruler Seti I, excavated from the Valley of the Kings. Soane had a thing about death: His designs for monuments and tombs were even the subject of a show, ``Soane and Death,'' at Dulwich last year. And the breakfast room at Pitshanger Manor is filled with images of death, including black angels hovering in the corners: You can imagine the ghoulish Soane tucking into his bacon and eggs beneath them.

The Soane Museum is magical from the moment you ring the bell to gain entry, just as a visitor would in Soane's time. Inside is a cantilevered staircase that, halfway up, sprouts a space bigger than a niche but smaller than a room: It's covered with paintings of Shakespearean scenes. ``Flying'' arches in the ceiling of the great library are purely decorative, and are backed by friezes of mirrors that multiply the space. Soane's ``Picture Room'' holds treasures including William Hogarth's paintings of ``The Rake's Progress.'' The Prodigal Son theme of the cycle is especially poignant, given that Soane's own two ne'er-do-well sons were complete disappointments to him. One was even in the habit of publishing anonymous articles satirizing his father's architecture.

Soane was friendly with the great painter J.M.W. Turner, and among the museum's treasures are three paintings by the English master of fog and mist. Another Turner, the 1826 ``Forum Romanum, for Mr. Soane's Museum,'' a brooding scene of antiquity that Soane commissioned, hangs in London's Tate Gallery. Soane apparently rejected it, although scholars aren't sure why.

Soane also owned some 30,000 architectural drawings. A selection is on view in a recently built gallery in a Soane house adjoining the museum. You can imagine Soane using them to convince prospective clients that by hiring him they'd be assuring their place in the history of design.

Pitshanger Manor was Soane's country house, although in the sprawl of contemporary London it barely qualifies as suburban. It was a house designed for entertaining, much as the Newport ``cottages'' were. Here Soane wooed clients, both with the architecture of his house and his designs for theirs.

Pitshanger existed before Soane bought it in 1800, but it was an architectural mishmash whose incongruous spaces he unified. Opened as a museum just in the last decade, Pitshanger served another purpose from 1900 on: It was a public library for Ealing Broadway. In 1940, an extension was added to the building. There are two causes for architecture buffs to rejoice here. One, that the local authority preserved Soane's charming, Regency-style villa rather than tearing it down. Two, that the 1940 addition is in a sympathetic style, and is a fine building in its own right. The good news for art fans is that Pitshanger is gradually being restored to its original grandeur, and also that the addition has been converted into a spacious and particularly hospitable gallery for contemporary art, with an ambitious schedule of exhibitions, everything from South African and Chinese art to work by West London locals.

Soane was a thrifty sort, and the main staircase in Pitshanger Manor is secondhand. All Soane's trademarks are in evidence in the house: ceilings either domed or adorned with fancy plasterwork; top lighting; a rosette motif borrowed from antiquity; a Portland stone facade based on the Arch of Constantine; sculpture-filled niches in the walls; ample use of mirrors to create illusionistic spaces; faux marble and woodgrain that were cheaper than the real thing. It all adds up to an airy, light environment, set off by the pretty park surrounding it. Trouble was, Mrs. Soane wasn't crazy about life in the ``country,'' which this was to her. So, after only a decade at Pitshanger, Soane sold his beloved property and moved back to town full time.

Like so many tourist attractions nowadays, Pitshanger comes with an introductory video. It features the ghost of Soane showing the cleaning lady around his manse, an apt touch, given Soane's fascination with the funereal. Its title is likewise appropriate: It's called ``A Day in the Death of Sir John Soane.''

Nine Rubens, seven Van Dycks, seven Poussins, two and a half Rembrandts. These are among the treasures owned by a little museum that until five years ago was part of a boys' preparatory school on the outskirts of London. (It's two and a half Rembrandts because the scholars in the Rembrandt Research Project have proclaimed that one ``Rembrandt'' might not be the real thing.)

The collection of paintings in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, formerly owned by Dulwich College, is one of the art world's best-kept secrets, even though Dulwich is just an 11-minute train ride from London's Victoria Station.

The collection was meant to go not to a boys' school but to the last king of Poland, Stanislas Augustus, who in 1790 commissioned the dealer Noel Desenfans to buy paintings intended for a National Gallery in Warsaw. What with the revolutionary climate on the Continent, Desenfans was able to snap up extraordinary pictures by Old Masters. But, alas, that revolutionary climate hit Poland, too, and the king was deposed before he could fulfill his goal. Desenfans failed to persuade the British government to acquire the paintings so that England could start its own national gallery. On his death in 1807, he left them to a lifelong friend, Francis Bourgeois, who, when he died in 1811, left them to Dulwich. Soane was commissioned to design a building to house them, and Dulwich became the first public gallery in Britain.

It wasn't just a gallery, though. The building was also to house a mausoleum where Desenfans, his wife, and Bourgeois are entombed, as well as an almshouse for the elderly. Soane accommodated this weird variety of uses in a building that is unified and harmonious. The brick exterior is stark, marked with rhythmic rows of ``blind'' arches that block any view inside. As for the galleries, they're laid out in a long, dignified enfilade that creates exciting vistas. Soane's love of skylights meant the galleries have no side windows using up precious space needed for hanging pictures. The ceilings are vaulted, and the scale of the galleries varies, to suit small Dutch genre pictures or large Flemish paintings of history and myth.

The collections are mind-boggling. The room with the Rembrandts is symmetrical and calming, its focal point the master's ``Girl Leaning on a Window Sill,'' a ruddy, blooming adolescent who gazes back at you intensely. A room filled with 19th-century French paintings is the frothy opposite. Playing a starring role here is Watteau's dainty painting of a fete galante, ``Les Plaisirs du Bal.'' The English painter Constable once remarked that it ``seemed as if painted in honey.'' There's a joke in the French room, too, in the form of Fragonard's ``Young Woman,'' a quick, scribbly sort of painting. On completing it, the artist must have stood back and said, ``Gosh! It looks like a Grimou!'' whereupon he painted out his own signature and signed it with that other, and lesser, artist's name. Just a little jest, mind you, but one that fooled everyone for years.

For all its glories, both architectural and in its collections, Dulwich fell on tough times and almost went under a few years back. It is now in the midst of a $16 million fund-raising campaign to replace the roof, floor, and harsh artificial lighting, and add amenities including a cafe, shop, and desperately needed storage.

The almshouses at Dulwich are long gone, but the mausoleum remains. It's a bizarre space, round, dark, and atmospheric. The ``marble'' columns are actually painted wood, and the ``porphyry'' tombs are painted plaster: Soane designed with an eye toward both the theatrical and the economical. Light from golden window panes streams onto the tombs. The sheer strangeness of having patrons buried in a museum is startling. Of course, you can now rent almost any museum in America for your wedding, Bar Mitzvah, or corporate function. But Dulwich suggests a new fund-raising ploy for cash-strapped US museums: For a substantial donation, let patrons rest in perpetuity near their favorite works of art.

I flew to London on British Airways on a deeply discounted off-season fare that made up for the predictably rotten weather. I stayed at The Leonard, a new hotel created from four adjacent, late-18th-century townhouses just off Portman Square. Eclectic and elegant, the Leonard has unusually spacious rooms and suites. Some are equipped with full kitchens, down to microwave and clothes washer, which make them perfect for family visits. The decor is silks and satins, but some of the staff wear black jeans, and the charming informality fostered by general manager Andrew Harris has already attracted a loyal clientele, including some prominent rock groups. Public rooms have roaring fires, and there's a morning room for breakfast and casual meals all day long. Prices start at about $250 a night. The Leonard is at 15 Seymour St., London. For reservations in the United States, call (800) 394-5938.