Dance, George the Younger
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- Dance, George the Younger
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(1741 - 1825), architect, 5th s. of George Dance; suc. fa. 1768 as clerk of works to the City of London; founder-member RA 1768; founder-member Architects' Club 1791; Master of Merchant Taylors' Company 1794; prof. of Architecture RA 1798 (resigned 1806); FRS.
1759 - 64 [dep.Gravesend Dec. 1758] Florence, Rome (May 1759 - 20 Apr. 1761), Anzio (20 Apr. - May 1761), Rome (Jun. 1761 - ), Naples (Jun. 1764) [Paris by 20 Nov. 1764; London by Dec. 1764]
Perhaps because of his youth (Dance was just 17 at the time of his departure for Italy) or more likely as a consequence of the Seven Years War, Dance sailed directly from England (thus avoiding travel through France), a voyage he later described as 'tedious' to Joseph Farington.1 Dance's brother, the painter Nathaniel Dance, had been at Rome since May 1754, but in January 1759 he was working at Leghorn, where George presumably arrived.2 The brothers either met there or at Florence, where they passed the spring. In May 1759 they travelled to Rome, where they probably resided at 77 Strada Felice.3 George was soon successful in gaining a commission for two chimney-piece designs from Sir Henry Mainwaring, which his patron later had carved in marble.
By the end of 1760 George was well established, studying geometry and practising drawing with an Italian architect, Niccolo Giansimoni, and carrying out a programme of measuring such structures as the Arch of Constantine and the cupola of St Peter's. In autumn 1760 Dance took advantage of the emergency scaffold erected by the three columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum Romanun and obtained a licence through the agency of Giansimoni to measure and to take casts of the order; a drawing in the Soane Museum may be a record of the cornice of the Temple. In a letter dated 11 November 1760 to Robert Mylne, Piranesi described how Dance (whom he described as 'well known' to Mylne) was at work on the scaffolding making these casts.4 This activity led to some celebrity in Rome for Dance, whose circle of acquaintance began to expand to include Daniel Crespin, Lord Grey (George Harry) who was travelling with Sir Henry Mainwaring, Thomas Robinson and the antiquary James Russel. He also met the supercilious James Adam, recently arrived from England, Gavin Hamilton and Robert Strange at a dinner party early in 1761.5
The year 1761 saw the nadir of Dance's fortunes. A breakdown of communication with his family, partly caused by a servant who failed to take Dance's letters to the post, left him reduced to 'utmost necessity for want of money' by the late summer. In the first week of October, however, he received a letter from his father together with a draft for £;30. Dance was introduced by Russel to three new acquaintances at this time: the Duchess of Bridgewater, Sir Richard Lyttelton, and Thomas Pitt (later Lord Camelford). Pitt commissioned a drawing of the gallery at the Colonna Palace, for which purpose Dance obtained a licence to measure it. His fortunes continued to improve. He earned some money by teaching the orders of architecture to John Hinchliffe. Encouraged by Hinchliffe, Dance began to plan a publication on the so-called Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. He had first made measured drawings of the temple in October 1761 (Soane Museum), and in the summer of 1762 he joined forces with an unnamed Italian architect to make further measurements on the basis of which he determined Palladio's record to be 'very inaccurate' (Quattro Libri, III, pls. 65 - 8). Perhaps because of Dance's immediate success on returning to England, nothing came of the intended publication, although a set of five finished drawings of the temple prepared in Rome during 1763 survives in the Soane Museum. In the spring of 1763 Dance was sharing his lodgings with the amateur artist Peter Stephens and the Irish painter James Forrester.
In April 1763 Dance fell ill at Rome and decided to recuperate for a month in the sea air at Anzio. Whilst there, he was overheard playing the flute by the Prince Corsini, nephew of Cardinal Corsini. Charmed by Dance's musical abilities, the Prince introduced the young architect to the Cardinal himself at his nearby villa, and the Cardinal promised to assist Dance in his Roman studies, first by obtaining permission for him to draw at the nearby Villa Albani. This patronage was sustained once the party returned to Rome in June, and Dance found himself being shown around Fuga's Palazzo Corsini in the Via della Lungara personally by the Cardinal and Prince. Thereafter his visits to the palace became weekly occurrences.
It seems strange to find him writing on 7 June 1763 that he would not enter for the Concorso Clementino of the Accademia di S.Luca because 'the judgment is so partial and protections of Cardinals, Princes etc. are of such consequence that in reality little honour is to be gained by it'.6 Dance chose instead to send drawings to the Accademia di Belle Arti, where the competition was anonymous and truly international since entrants did not have to present themselves for a prova examination. Letters of January 1761 and December 1762 in the archive of the academy show that Dance intended to enter in 1762 but failed to prepare the drawings in time.7 Instead he competed in the 1763 concorso, when the architecture subject was for a 'magnificent gallery', giving Batoni and P?cheux as his referees. Dance's design was sent to Parma on 6 April 1763 and was declared the winner on 23 May.8 Only the plan is at the academy, but English legend copies of all the drawings are in the Soane Museum.
Dance's activities during the following two years are less well documented, but it is known that in December 1763 he met David Garrick at Rome.9 In June 1764 Andrew Lumisden wrote to James Bruce confirming that Bruce would not be able to have Dance's services as draughtsman for the expedition to Africa; it appears from the same source that George and Nathaniel were then studying at Naples. At some stage during that year Dance was elected to the Accademia degli Arcadi in Rome, and by 20 November he was at Paris, and almost at the end of his homeward journey.(10) He cannot have been present, therefore, at his election (with Nathaniel) to the Accademia di S.Luca on 21 December 1764. It would seem from the minutes of the academy that George Dance's absentia election was sponsored by Piranesi, who attended the relevant meetings and who in January 1765 was given the responsibility of securing the papal permission necessary for both brothers because of their Protestantism.(11)
1. Farington Diary (6 Jan. 1808). 2. See Dance letters MSS. 3. Hayward List, 12, 21. AVR SA, S.Andrea delle Fratte (1763). 4. C. Gotch, Architectural Review, 110, Sep. 1951, 182. 5. Fleming, Adam, 281. 6. Soane Museum (Dance Slider 4, Set 11, no.1v). 7. Accademia di Belle Arti, Parma, Archivio Corr., cart.2, f.1; 3, f.72; 4, f.12. D. Stillman, Jnl.of the Soc.of Architectural Historians, 32, Mar. 1973, 55. 8. Accademia di Belle Arti, Parma, Atti, 10, f.40, and Archivio Corr., cart.4, f.12. M. Pellegri ed., Saggi dei Concorsi di Pittura Architettura e Scultura 1752 - 1796, [1979], 57 - 8. 9. Garrick Letters, 1:401. 10. Ibid., 2:433. 11. ANSL 52:72, 73v, 74v, 75v.
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