Soane, Sir John (sōn), 1753–1837, English architect. After studying with George Dance, the younger, Soane won a fellowship to Rome. He toured Italy and returned in 1780 to begin his practice in England. In 1788 he was chosen to succeed Sir Robert Taylor as architect for the Bank of England, his largest and most important work. Among his other works are the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Pitzhanger Manor at Ealing, and his own residence at Lincoln's Inn Fields, now known as the Soane Museum, which he bequeathed as a museum for his collections. He devoted his later years to teaching architecture and delivering lectures. Although one of the leaders of the classic revival classic revival, widely diffused phase of taste (known as neoclassic) which influenced architecture and the arts in Europe and the United States during the last years of the 18th and the first half of the 19th cent.
..... Click the link for more information. in England, he went beyond the mere imitation of classical models generally prevalent and evolved a highly individual style through an imaginative and flexible use of Greek and Roman motifs and a daring manipulation of interior space and scale. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1802 and was knighted in 1831.

Bibliography

See biography by G. Darley (1999); studies by J. Summerson (1952), P. Du Prey (2 vol., 1977–82), D. Stroud (1984), and M. Richardson and M. A. Stevens, ed. (1999).

Soane, Sir John

(born Sept. 10, 1753, Goring, Oxfordshire, Eng.—died Jan. 20, 1837, London) British architect. He was appointed architect to the Bank of England in 1788. Various government appointments followed, and in 1806 he succeeded his mentor, George Dance (1741–1837), as professor of architecture at the Royal Academy. His work is characterized by a tendency to reduce Classical elements to their structural essentials, to use linear instead of modeled ornamentation, to favour shallow domes and top lighting, and to handle interior spaces in an ingenious manner.