Joseph Michael Gandy (1771 – 1843) was an English artist, architect and architectural theorist perhaps best known for his imaginative architectural fantasy paintings depicting Sir John Soane’s designs. Indeed, Gandy worked extensively with Soane both as a draftsman and creative partner from 1798 – 1809.

After entering the office of James Wyatt in the late 1780s at the age of fifteen, Gandy joined the Royal Academy Schools in 1789. A year later he won the Gold Medal for drawing with A Triumphal Arch. In 1794, under the sponsorship of architect John Martindale, he travelled to Italy, where he won a medal in the prestigious Concorso Clementino sponsored by the Accademia di San Luca in 1795. He remained in Italy until 1797, when he was forced back to England both by Napoleon’s advancing army and his sponsor’s bankruptcy. It was on his return that Gandy found employment as a draughtsman with Sir John Soane.

With a reputation as someone who was often difficult to work with, Gandy built little over the course of his career; there are just 14 projects listed in Colvin’s Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600 – 1840, and none of them are of great importance. He was twice sent to debtor’s prison in 1816 and 1830, and Soane would often find himself lending money to Gandy. It is perhaps testament to the former’s high regard of Gandy’s skill as a draughtsman that he did this.

Gandy became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1803, however he was never elected a full Royal Academician, despite several attempts between 1809 and 1820, and his last architectural commission was in 1825. In 1833, he left central London and relocated to Chiswick where at 58 Grove Park Terrace there is now a blue plaque recording the residence there of ‘Joseph Michael Gandy … Architectural Visionary’ between 1833 and 1838.

As Brian Lukacher records in Joseph Gandy: An Architectural Visionary in Georgian England (Thames and Hudson 2006) ‘for the remainder of his life Gandy focused on scholarly pursuits by continuing his collection of drawings and archaeological research on English castles and by writing a voluminous manuscript of architectural history and theory. He also embarked on an unwieldy project of illustrating a world history of architecture.’

As a contemporary of Turner, Gandy was often compared to the artist by contemporary 19th century critics because his watercolours, (which were his preferred medium), often conjure up images of the Romantic and sublime.

Many of Gandy’s topographical drawings and watercolours of the British coast and countryside, such as those in Richard Feigen’s collection, serve as a form of diary and travelogue, a practice he had begun during his period of study as a young man in Italy. Gandy clearly took much pleasure in sketching these snatched moments in time, with each one succeeding in evoking a wonderful sense of atmosphere and romanticism.

The landscape sketches offered here date from the early1820s and were acquired from the artist by his friend, the Neoclassical sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott (1775-1856). Westmacott had studied in Rome with Gandy and sometimes purchased works from his often-impecunious friend. He later assembled these watercolours into two albums which he gave to his daughter Maria Poole. One of these albums is today in the Sir John Soane Museum in London, while the other album was eventually broken up and the drawings dispersed in 2004.

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Auction Details

Wednesday 2 July 2025, 2pm BST
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