George Dance the Younger

George Dance the younger, RA was an English architect and surveyor as well as a portraitist.

The fifth and youngest son of the architect George Dance (the elder), he came from a family of architects, artists and dramatists. He was described by Sir John Summerson as "among the few really outstanding architects of the century", but few of his buildings remain.

On his return from the Grand Tour, George (the younger) joined his father's office. His earliest London project was the rebuilding of All Hallows-on-the-Wall Church. He was one of five architects asked to submit designs, and his design was chosen on 8 May 1765. Work on the building starting in June 1765, at a cost of £2,941, and the building was consecrated on 8 September 1767.

In 1768, when he was only 27, George succeeded as Architect and Surveyor to the Corporation of London on his father's death. His first major public works were the rebuilding of Newgate Prison in 1770 and building the front of the Guildhall, London. Other London works of his include the rebuilding of the Church of St Bartholomew the Less (1793), a former chapel within the precincts of Barts Hospital.

At Bath, Somerset he largely designed the Theatre Royal, built by John Palmer in 1804-5.

Coleorton Hall was one of his few buildings in the Gothic style.

Many of Dance's buildings have been demolished, including the Royal College of Surgeons (apart from the portico), Newgate Prison, St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics, the Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, the library at Lansdowne House, the Common Council Chamber and Chamberlain's Court at the Guildhall, Ashburnham Place, and Stratton Park (demolished save for its Tuscan portico).

Dance retired from practice in 1815.

Dance's long career spanned several of the conventional phases of the Neo-Classical movement, from mid-18th century French Classicism to the full blown Greek Revival of the early 19th century. As such, he also played an important role in the careers of several major architects within this continuum, such as Sir John Soane and Sir Robert Smirke. His innovative interiors for the church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall, the Guildhall Common Council Chamber, and the sculpture gallery of Lansdowne House were key to the development of Soane's first work at the Bank of England, the Bank Stock Office in 1792. On Dance's recommendation, Robert Smirke joined Soane's office as a pupil in 1796, but when the two fell out after less than a year, Dance continued to champion Robert Smirke who went on to become the country's leading Greek Revival architects. Significantly, some of Dance's later work embraced the increasingly austere Greek Revival style, such as the Ionic portico on Stratton Park of 1803 and on the Royal College of Surgeons (built 1806 onwards, so one of the first strict Greek Revival porticos in London).

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023