THE PORTRAIT OF SIR JOHN SOANE, R.A. By Arthur T.
Bolton. (Sir John Soane's Museum. 16s.)—The Curator of the Soanc Museum has not given us a portrait of Sir John Soane, but a group picture of the circle in which he lived, in whose midst we can just discern the shadowy figure of the highly successful architect who made his fortune, and left us a Museum, the Bank, the Duke of York's Column, and part of St. James's Palace, and whose father was a bricklayer. In his Introduction Mr. Bolton develops the theory that we -may know a man by his friends, and tells us that we may know Sir John Soane by his correspondents. Surely this is impossible, since all letter-writers write about themselves. The present volume is almost entirely made up of the letters Sir John Soane received, and were it not for a little help given us in the Introduction, and the Editor's short comments, we thould hardly recognize the man to whom these delightful epistles were addressed. As it is, we know him for a man newly rich and naturally generous in whom other artists con- fided freely and at length, upon their own subject, and to whom all sort-s of people turned in trouble, and whose thin- ness of skin rendered him vindictive. It is a pleasantly written and channingly illustrated book.
Previous page
