INTERSTICES02.indb


Signature Effects: 
John Soane and The Mark of Genius

Helene Furján

But let the sacred Genius of the night 
Such mystic visions send, as Spenser saw, 
When thro’ bewildering Fancy’s magic maze, 
To the bright regions of the fairy world 
Soar’d his creative mind.

Thomas Warton, The Pleasures of Melancholy (1747)

We have now conducted the reader, step by step, through the apart-
ments on these two fl oors, appropriated to the reception of works of 
art, and may safely assert that no where within a similar extent does 
there exist such a succession of varied and beautiful scenery, so many 
striking points of view, so many fascinating combinations and con-
trasts — so much originality, invention, contrivance, convenience, 
and taste. 

John Britton, The Union of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting (1827)

Today, the question of ’genius’, in architectural discourse, is, perhaps, associated 
more with the sciences, with what John Maeda has referred to as “creative code” 
(2004). However, the persistence of an interest in ’signature effects‘ among con-
temporary architects, like Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman and Greg Lynn, suggests 
older notions of genius persist. Artistic genius has typically been associated with 
the Romantic period, when, as a means to theorize the role of the author and the 
process of creation, the concept became legitimate within the discourses of art 
and architecture. Its arrival signalled a moment in which design was no longer 
seen as a process of mimesis — the recombination of pre-existing material — but 
rather as an individual act of invention. Architecture, in the Romantic period, 
elaborated a complex defi nition of genius, tying innovation to its own version 
of form-fi nding; to aesthetic theories steeped in atmospherics, mood and effects; 
to politics, the politics of aesthetic and cultural discourse and the politics of the 
nation-state. All these concerns can be seen mobilized in the work of that quin-
tessential romantic architect, John Soane. This essay will explore late eighteenth 
and early nineteenth century aspects of genius, through the motives and motifs 
at play in Soane’s work, focusing largely on the most idiosyncratic of his projects, 
his own house at 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Soane’s house-museum was formally bequeathed to the British nation in 1833 
and preserved by an act of parliament on Soane’s death in 1837. Work on the 
house and three adjacent lots began in 1792 and spanned the rest of his life, con-

 

INTERSTICES 07INTERSTICES 07



tinuing from developments at his country house in Ealing, Pitzhanger Manor.1 
Lincoln’s Inn Fields was a hybrid in many ways. Nested into the functioning do-
mestic spaces of a cultivated urbanite was an architectural offi ce (in latter years a 
studio training apprentices); a museum, a room-scaled model case; an archive of 
drawings and folios; an extensive professional and scholarly library; an art gal-
lery which transformed the walls into cabinets, interleaving the paintings in lay-
ers to maximize hang space; and a sequence of themed spaces, largely “gothick” 
in character and loaded with moody special effects. Special effects, indeed, were 
mobilized throughout the house in complex spatial interpenetrations; in soaring 
triple height domes and fi ssures; in mirrored complexities and gleams; in color-
ized or gloomy atmospheres. These effects, picturesque and sublime in their aes-
thetic leanings, but also owing allegiance to popular spectacles in London at 
the time, were part of the panoply of techniques — and, indeed, technologies2 
— deployed by Soane to exhibit his ’genius’ as architect and choreographer of 
space. These techniques can also be found in Soane’s other projects, notably in 
the domed spaces of the Bank of England’s public offi ces, and his mysterious 
Freemason’s Hall. But it is in the house that they are most intensely engaged.

Showing Off:

Soane was no less aware of the economic value of signature effects than today’s 
architects are. He was more than willing to mobilize his own houses as highly 
successful publicity machines, as others - like the Adams brothers and Thomas 
Hope - had done before him, demonstrating, to students, peers, critics and po-
tential clients alike, his ’genius‘ as a tag of marketability. The many visits, tours 
and parties conducted at both residences were intended to reveal, to infl uential 
clients and friends, Soane’s architectural skills, to demonstrate his genius, origi-
nality and taste, as well as his ability to keep up with fashions. From the Gothic 
scenes and intellectual banquets at Pitzhanger, to the major public spectacles staged 
at No. 13 in 1825,3 to the design of the spaces themselves, signature effects were 
constantly used as marketing devices.

‘Effect’, and its corollary, ‘affect’, were frequently used terms during the eight-
eenth and early nineteenth centuries. ‘Effect’ was the mark of production, it was 
the mark of the ‘hand’, the trace of artifi ce, of fabrication. ‘Effect’ was also the 
ability of an artwork to produce an impression on the mind, to produce ‘affect’. 
In Soane’s house, eighteenth century aesthetic theories were combined with a 
baroque theatricality adapted from Piranesi. Soane stage-managed a raft of tech-
nological possibilities to produce light and shade, scenography and setting, ne-
gotiating tensions between horizontal and vertical, as well as complex spatial 
manipulations of formal elements, to create a whole range of expressive effects. 
These effects — the production of a certain image, a staging, an atmosphere, 
certain qualities of light and shade, and so on — culminated, in the words of his 
friend, well-known archaeologist, John Britton, in a space designed for “specta-
cle and display” (Britton, 1827: 44); a theatre of effects designed to highlight and 
showcase his talent.

The latter is signifi cant here. Showcasing talent, that is, creativity, invention, style, 
design skill, was a controversial aim in the early nineteenth century. To privilege 
talent in this way was to mobilize a debate that moved the production of a work 

1 For a more complete history 
of Soane’s building and collecting 
activities, see Thornton & Dorey 
(1992); Stroud (1996); Feinberg 
Millenson (1984 & 1987).

2 No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields 
was an early house to be fully 
plumbed and have a central heat-
ing system.

3 The house was opened three 
successive Saturday evenings 
to some 900 invited guests to 
celebrate the acquisition of an 
Egyptian sarcophagus. This was 
also an opportunity to show off 
the house, which the deploy-
ment of theatrical lighting, to 
interior and exterior, aided. For 
more on this event, see Furján 
(2002).

5757



of art away from a mimetic act to a highly individualized act of creation, taken 
to its extreme in Romantic theory under the concept of genius. Soane’s house, as 
showcase, parallels the work of artists such as his friend, J. M. W. Turner, who 
overturned dominant classical notions of self-effacement, leaving the traces of 
his ‘hand’, and his brush or palette knife, clearly legible. Turner’s abstractions 
made explicit the difference between “natural effect and the imaginative reality 
of art” (Gowing, 1966: 31). He was not content to have his work subsumed under 
the blanket of good taste, judged on how well it imitated nature or remained 
faithful to the existing rules of the genre. Rather, he believed in the importance 
of creative genius, an innate ability which he saw as unique and unfathomable. 
Like Soane, he also saw himself located in a genealogy of great artists whom he 
frequently invoked in his paintings or their captions.

The mark of the hand, the idiosyncratic detail or technique, indicated the ambi-
tious subject behind it: creator, inventor. In Soane’s house, then, the role of im-
agination was crucial. The theatrical nature of the rooms, as scenes and evocative 
settings, demonstrated the range and power of his imaginative faculties. Britton 
noted this, and thus confi rmed Soane’s stature, in a text he gave to Soane as a 
Christmas gift in 1824, on the completion of a suite of rooms in the basement, 
fi ctionally inhabited by Soane as the monk ‘Padre Giovanni’. “The Sinners [sic] 
offering at the Shrine of St. John of Soania”, professed his admiration for the 
“most potent, grave and reverend St. John” and paid homage to “the miraculous 
powers and potencies of that revered Saint, which I had chosen for my father and 
mediator”.4

In Soane’s style, as in Turner’s, the emphasis on individuality worked against 
the grain of established tradition, by refusing a servile imitation of Classicism, 
and insisting on the indelible mark of his own hand, his own particular genius.5 
Such inventiveness, a continual re-reading and re-invention of classical rules, 
was considered to be an example of bad taste (i.e. ‘improper’), because it broke 
the accepted rules of classical architecture.6 Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other stal-
warts, considered marks of authorship defects, and architectural theorists large-
ly continued to assert that Classicism involved the emulation of Antique models 
and accepted conventions, not invention. In effect, architectural practice was to 
protect a status quo — an architect was to work within a tradition and pass on its 
rules to the future. In contrast, Soane’s interest in an identifi able style, one that 
could point directly to its singular author, promoted an interpretive, inventive 
and highly individual approach to the traditions of architecture.7 

4 Soane Museum Archive, 
7/10/8, 2.

5 For more on the attacks on 
Soane’s style see Schumann-Ba-
cia (1991).

6 Such a resistance to imitation 
could already be seen in the 
French querelle over the same 
issue of imitation (the ancients) 
versus invention (the moderns). 
See Perrault (1993).

7 It is also worth noting that 
part of Soane’s re-evaluation of 
classicism was due to the infl u-
ence of the picturesque and of 
romanticism; both had forced 
a revaluation of the accepted 
taste of the classical style.

INTERSTICES 07

Photographs by Michael Shepherd

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Poetic Genius:

John Summerson, noted architectural historian and theorist, and curator of the 
Soane Museum from 1945-1984, was most probably the fi rst to refer to “the Soane 
style” which he regarded as highly distinctive and idiosyncratic: 

In 1792, when it arrives suddenly at maturity, there was not, anywhere 
in Europe, an architecture as unconstrained by loyalties, as free in the 
handling of proportion and as adventurous in structure and lighting 
as that which Soane introduced at the Bank of England in that year 
(Summerson, 1983: 9).

Summerson notes that much of that style had been formed under the infl uence of 
George Dance, and that Soane developed his own signature version by adding, 
“a novel handling of proportion, a highly personal mode of decorative emphasis 
and a tendency to arrive at solutions by unlimited, often bizarre, distortions of old 
themes” (Summerson, 1983: 9). These traits included pendentive domes with lan-
terns, often dilating in diameter to all but swallow the springing arches, semi-cir-
cular arches screening hidden light sources, double height tribune spaces, coloured 
skylights, and complex sectional interpenetrations. For instance, the complexities 
of sculpted space for which Soane has become famous, demonstrate, not an affi lia-
tion to style as genre — the following of precedent — but to space, conceived as an 
abstraction of solids and voids, as a site for morphological experimentation. 

Georges Teyssot argues that, for eighteenth century architects, abandoning the 
rules of classical architecture meant not a freedom from technique but a freedom 
for technique.8 Likewise, writing of the sectional relationship between the gothic 
parlour and picture room above it at No. 13, John Britton already pointed out that, 
“it would be utterly impossible to convey by a drawing, however well executed, 
any adequate idea of the singular effect thus produced” (Britton, 1827: 41). He re-
marks on the originality and skill evidenced: 

We perceive what beautiful and novel effects may be attained by ingen-
ious and tasteful contrivance — what rich and picturesque architec-
tural scenery may be created within the most confi ned space … After 
witnessing what has been accomplished here, let no architect complain 
that private residences afford little scope for the display of originality 

8 See Teyssot (1978: 62).

5959

Photographs by Michael Shepherd



INTERSTICES 07

and fancy, or that striking effects cannot be produced on a small scale, 
or that picturesque beauty cannot be obtained, except at the expense 
of convenience (Britton, 1827: 28-29). 

“Singular effect” is critical. In defence of Soane’s originality, Britton acknowl-
edged that some critics may have been of the opinion that, “he has occasionally 
allowed himself too much license”, but retorted that there was no reason “why 
architecture, which is purely an art of invention, should be more fettered or re-
stricted in this respect than any other” (Britton, 1827: 9). This was a reference 
to a commonly held opinion that painting, since it represented, was an art of 
imitation; sculpture was part imitation, part invention, as it isolated bodies from 
settings, stripped colour and was often paired with architecture; architecture 
and music, being the most abstracted from nature, were non-representational, 
and hence inventive arts. However, Britton did caution against novelty for novel-
ty’s sake and stressed that innovation required, “consummate judgment and the 
most refi ned taste” and could in itself be seen as “the touchstone of an architect’s 
ability; for it is exceedingly diffi cult to hit upon the due medium between servil-
ity and timidity on the one hand, or caprice and rashness on the other” (Britton, 
1827: 9).

Soane was against the “monotony and tame repetition” (Soane, 1996: 605) of the 
prevailing neoclassical design method, as a blind copying of historical prece-
dent, and he developed instead a method of invention that abstracted and pre-
served the effects of such styles.9 Singularity was the product of an experimental 
technique derived from Dance and the work of visionaries Soane admired - Éti-
enne-Louis Boullée, Nicholas Ledoux, J-B Piranesi. It could also be found in the 
cult of novelty that took hold of theorists of the picturesque, as it appeared in 
the continuous references to novel effects made by Barbara Hofl and in her com-
mentaries for Soane’s privately printed descriptions of his house, or in Britton’s 
earlier Union of Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting.10 In theories of the sublime 
and the picturesque, architecture turned into a theatre for special effects, charac-
terised by the play of mass and void, of form, and of light, shade and atmosphere. 
For Britton, Soane’s house, especially the museum with its crypt and monkish 
apartments, aligned architecture with poetry: “We perceive here not merely the 
imaginative architect, but the poet, and are at a loss which most to admire, the 
originality or the beauty, the mystery or the intricacy of the conception” (Britton, 
1827: 6). 

In his 1830 Description, Soane himself noted an emphasis on the conjuring of 
“an almost infi nite succession of those fanciful effects which constitute the poetry 
of Architecture”, notably through the use of picturesque devices (Soane, 1830: 
2).11 Like many eighteenth century theorists of taste, aesthetics, or association, 
Soane, when referring to poetics, used ‘fancy’ and ‘fanciful’ interchangeably 
with ‘imagination’. It wasn’t until Coleridge wrote his Biographia Literaria in the 
early nineteenth century that fancy and imagination were distinguished from 
each other. Drawing on Aristotle, Coleridge linked “the associating power” to 
memory and fancy, and kept them both distinct from reason and imagination 
(Coleridge, 1817: Vol. I, 104-05). In his theory, fancy was characterized by fi nitude, 
remaining inseparably linked to the store of impressions, memories and ideas of 
the perceiving subject’s sum of experiences (Coleridge, 1817: Vol. I, 296). In con-
trast, imagination was limitless; imagination was novelty and invention where 

9 On the topic of the abstrac-
tion of styles to effects, see 
Summerson (1983: 14); and Tey-
ssot (1978: 67).

10 “Far above, and on every 
side, were concentrated the 
most precious relics of Archi-
tecture and Sculpture, disposed 
so happily as to offer the charm 
of novelty, the beauty of pictur-
esque design, and the sublimity 
resulting from a sense of vener-
ation due to the genius and the 
labours of the ‘mighty dead.’” 
Hofl and, B. In Soane, (1835/36: 
37).

11 For more on this topic, see 
Furján 1997.



 

61

fancy was mimesis, always beholden to the re-assemblage of precedent. For Col-
eridge, imagination, “that syncretic and magical power”, is clearly the privileged 
faculty in the cultivation of artistic genius: “Good sense is the body of poetic gen-
ius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere 
and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole” (Coleridge, 
1817: Vol II, 11-12).

In strikingly similar terms, Soane set out the combination of faculties necessary 
for the production of great architecture: “rich fancy and bold imagination; fl ights 
of powerful mind and magical genius” (Soane, 1966: 619, emph. added). Soane 
made explicit use of poetics in his architectural work, and evoked the term ‘po-
etry’ for its romantic and theatrical implications and associations. “Like Poetry, 
[architecture] presents a succession of varied pictures” (Soane, quoted in Bolton 
1927: 100). Recognizing these aims, Isaac D’Israeli was to describe the museum 
as a “built poem”.12 Thus, the “poetry of architecture” is, in Soane’s understand-
ing, a combination of novelty, the picturesque, the sublime and poetic association. 
However, it is also evidence of that elusive quality, genius. Soane wrote of his 
paper projects — his “architectural visions” — that they were the “wild effusions 
of a mind glowing with an ardent and enthusiastic desire to attain professional 
distinction” (Bolton, 1927: 18). 

In 1818 William Hazlitt wrote of the representation of objects distorted by the 
poetic imagination, thus immediately evoking the distortions of the convex mir-
ror; that beloved of picturesque tourists (the Claude Glass), as well as the many 
that line the interiors of Soane’s house (see Furján, 1997). Combining the mirror 
with the lamp, he further complemented the mimetic faculty with a reasoning and 
“emotional light”, in order to show that the artistic work is mediated, the product 
of the object and its contemplation, the work of the mind’s refl ection (quoted in 
Abrams, 1971: 52-54).13 In this analogy, Hazlitt brought together the two modes of 
composition that formed the basis of a romantic neo-Classicism like Soane’s - the 
mirror of contemplation and mimesis, together with the emanating light of indi-
vidual genius. The fi gure of the lamp, in Hazlitt’s evocation, originates in notions 
of God and the human spirit fi gured as a fl ame (typically burning in the darkness 
of evil and disbelief). This romantic re-fi guration follows directly from the En-
lightenment conception of knowledge understood literally as enlightening, as the 
bright light of illumination that renders things clear and visible; except that here, 
it is the light of imagination, of creation, not of nature and reason. 

Styling a Nation, Nationalizing a Style:

John Gwynn, in London and Westminster Improved, described the question of “Pub-
lic Magnifi cence” in architecture as “a national concern” for honouring the coun-
try’s distinction and its people’s genius, along with its culture’s refi nement of taste 
and manners (Gwynn, 1766: 1-2). Soane, in one of his Royal Academy Lectures, 
linked magnifi cence to “national taste” and “national glory” through the notion of 
“character”, essentially a representational aspect of architecture, one he admitted 
is malleable:

12 Letter from Isaac D’Isralei to 
Soane, 14 August 1836, in Bol-
ton (1927: 529).

13 Hazlitt is quoted from his es-
say On Poetry in General.



INTERSTICES 07

Notwithstanding all that has been urged to the contrary, be assured 
my young friends, that architecture in the hands of men of genius 
may be made to assume whatever character is required of it. ... With-
out distinctness of character, buildings may be convenient and an-
swer the purposes for which they are raised, but they will never be 
pointed out as examples for imitation nor add to the splendour of the 
possessor, improve the national taste, or increase the national glory. 
The want of proper character and appropriate magnifi cence in the 
buildings of this wealthy metropolis is not confi ned to the exterior 
form and interior distribution of single structures, but is almost gen-
eral (Soane, 1966: 648).14

Britain, as a nation, required a self-image strong enough to bolster her status, both 
domestically and internationally.15 The British “Nation” had always included the 
diverse countries of the British Isles, and was now the seat of an expansive em-
pire. The attempt to develop a self-image was steeped in a cultural anxiety about 
the implications of its poly-cultural and poly-national constitution. How was 
England, the origin and centre of this largely remote empire, to keep its presence 
readable?16 In The True-Born Englishman, William Defoe argued that England was 
a mongrel nation of mongrel origin, the barbarous offspring of all the invaders 
and colonizers who had besieged England in the course of history (Defoe, 1701: 
28-30). In the multiple and essentially arbitrary answers to the question of, what 
is English, Defoe saw an indication that the nation was a self-conscious fabrica-
tion. The poly-stylism of Neoclassicism, meanwhile, which included Egyptian, 
“Hindoo,” Gothic, as well as Greek and Roman infl uences, refl ected the intense 
effects of travel on British culture, as well as the diversity of the British Empire. 

Soane’s own stylistic solution to the question of a national architecture, which 
went beyond that of most of his neoclassical colleagues, was the development of 
a new classical language. Moving away from the abstracted incising of the Bank 
of England interiors, for instance, Soane developed a fully-fl edged ornamenta-
tion that combined Gothic, Roman and Greek detailing. This was intended as a 
truly national style, original and contemporary, and one that would be signifi -
cantly unique to Britain. However, it was also highly idiosyncratic, the product 
of individual innovation, developed in a climate in which “genius is encouraged 
to create, rather than to copy and adopt” (Papworth, 1916: 312). Soane’s “national 
style” appeared in many of his public projects for London, both commissioned 
and proposed; for example the House of Lords, the Law Courts, the new Of-
fi ces for the Board of Privy Trade and the Privy Council, as well as an ambitious 
(unrealised) scheme for a processional route through the city.17 Its novelty was 
timely; a new nation needed a new language. 

‘Genius’ was thus employed in two different modes by Soane. Through the inven-
tiveness of the “Soane style”, he sought to gain a market advantage; through inven-
tion, he contributed to the means by which a nation with a newly constructed iden-
tity could represent itself. In the architectural world Soane inhabited, they could 
be, and often were, easily blurred. The numerous controversies that Soane was in-
volved in, and that he so bitterly complained of, pitted him in battle against other 
architects, as well as the “state apparatus” - in the form of his local district surveyor, 
the Royal Academy or parliament — in a struggle for architectural prominence.18 
The ‘battle of styles’ that these confl icts represent was also a battle for political lev-

14 The reference to character 
here is signifi cant, an important 
element of neoclassical archi-
tectural theory, most notably 
theorized by Quatremère de 
Quincy. For more on this, see di 
Palma (2002).

15 See Colley (1992).

16 See Pagden (1995).

17 For more information on 
these projects see Richardson & 
Stevens (1999).

18 For detail on these confl icts, 
see Darley (1999).

Photograph by Helene Furján



 

63

erage. ‘Genius’ was thus as much about economics — who will receive coveted and 
lucrative public commissions — as it was about aesthetic theory or artistic merit.

PR:

As a meticulously curated archive of Soane’s production and its genealogy, wit-
ness the purchase of the Dance and Adams archives, or the prominently displayed 
Piranesi etchings. Soane’s house, too, is an emblem of signature construction 
within the terms of a legacy. The bequest of the house and its considerable col-
lections, including over 60,000 drawings, forms a cultural inheritance both of his 
own work, that of those architects to whom he felt himself indebted, and of the 
aesthetic theories and cultural trends materialized in it. Thus, it was also a tem-
ple to fame. One could think of the house — as library and museum — operat-
ing as a carefully constructed exposition, with meticulous evidence and detailed 
footnotes, buttressing a claim to his place in the panoply of great architectural 
geniuses. One could think for a moment of today’s architects engaged in similar 
moves: Michael Graves, a fan of Soane, turning his house into a museum already 
gifted to the public; or Frank Gehry, signing and dating everything he draws, the 
building archive already under contract on his death. It could be said, that they, 
like Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, and others, are great masters of the signature 
effect. And perhaps more than any other contemporary architect, Graves and Ge-
hry have literally sold their signatures with canny success. 

The “Soane style” could be seen as a similarly commercial exploitation of signa-
ture. In a parallel move, Turner’s famous self-portrait at the Royal Academy an-
nual show on Varnishing Day made great fl ourish out of his auratic presence, and 
clearly served to add massive commercial appeal to his signature - both on the 
work and clearly in it. Soane’s house, and the highly idiosyncratic public projects 
he built or designed, certainly helped cement his claim to a signature effect - in-
vention as the mark of genius. It gave a competitive advantage to a long line of 
‘great’ architects, from Michelangelo to Ledoux, from Piranesi to Boullée, and con-
tinues to do so today. It is not for nothing that Peter Eisenman is want to insert 
himself into a genealogy of ‘signature’ architects, just as Soane did, or that his 
student, Greg Lynn, will talk of ’signature effects‘ as a deliberate design goal, one 
that counters the general misapprehension that today’s digital architecture is ’au-
togenerated’.

There is no doubt that Soane was a master of self-representation, ready to demon-
strate the greatness of his achievements and certain of their worth as cultural leg-
acy. He used his ability to create a theatre of special effects and spectacular spaces: 
a sublime architectural virtuosity as a deliberately emphatic way of expressing 
his professional skill. His house’s primary ‘effect’ was thus the demonstration of 
Soane’s consummate genius as the magician of space, a master showman display-
ing his talents and achievements in a blaze of effect. Critic John Papworth referred 
to Soane’s work as “the ideal imagery” of “an exuberant fancy” (Papworth, 1816: 
312). The Athenaeum, reviewing Soane’s house-museum in 1828, echoed Papworth’s 
sentiments: 

Here he has collected his rich stores of art and antiquity. Here he revels 
in architectural glory, dwelling, magician-like, among fairie chambers 

Photograph by Michael Shepherd



INTERSTICES 07

of his own creating. Of its kind it is perfect, the ichnography of the 
very mind of the architect, everywhere diffi culties surmounted, inge-
nuity triumphant ... 

The importance of fi ction and imagination to Soane’s domestic enterprise must 
be emphasized; fantastic invention is the mechanism by which genius can be 
revealed. This ‘theatrical’ architectonics complimented the architectural theatre 
of the house (as museum), its role as memorial immortalizing his work, his col-
lections and his creations, of which the house-museum itself was the most exem-
plary manifestation. It is no surprise, then, that the visitor to the house fi nds, in 
the centre of the double height tribune space that focuses the museum section, a 
bust of Soane himself, surveying his collections and accomplishments. 

John Britton, in his theorization of architecture as an art of invention, necessitat-
ing originality, experimentation and innovation, was mindful that ‘genius’ was 
merely the fl ipside of a failed experiment: 

In this, as in many other things, much depends on success: if the ar-
chitect be fortunate in his attempts, he enriches his art and adds to his 
powers; if he fails, he has done worse than nothing, and exposes him-
self to derision. Innovators are like usurpers: they either become the 
founders of new dynasties, or are hurled as rebels from the eminence 
to which they aspired (1827: 9). 

Soane may not have generated the dynasties he hoped for, but for Britton (as for 
the many admirers of Soane’s work today) it was clear that No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn 
Fields memorialised, more generally, the achievement of genius in Soane’s oeu-
vre. Soane’s risky experiments in morphology and effect had paid off.

References:

Abrams, M. H. (1971). The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. 
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Bolton, A. (1927). Portrait of Sir John Soane, RA (1753-1837) Set Forth in Letters from his Friends 
(1775-1837). London: Butler and Tanner. 

Britton, J. (1827). The Union of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting.

Coleridge, S.T. (1817). Biographia Literaria. London: Rest Fenner. 

Colley, L. (1992). Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. New Haven/London: Yale Univer-
sity Press 

Defoe, D. (1701). The True-Born Englishman: A Satyr. London. 

Darley, G. (1999). John Soane: An Accidental Romantic. New Haven/London: Yale University 
Press

Designs for Public and Private Buildings. The Athenaeum (15 April 1828).

Feinberg Millenson, S. (1984). The Genesis of Sir John Soane‘s Museum Idea: 1801-1810. 
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (October 1984), 225-237.



 

65

Feinberg Millenson, S. (1987). Sir John Soane’s Museum. UMI Research Press.

Furján, H. (2002). Sir John Soane’s Spectacular Theatre. AA Files (47, Summer), 12-22.

Furján, H. (1997). The Specular Spectacle of the House of the Collector. Assemblage (34, 
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Gowing, L. (1966). Turner: Imagination and Reality. New York: The Museum of Modern Art

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