Moody Hall: Front Elevation and Principal Floor Plan
Date:
undated
Materials & Techniques:
Graphite, pen and brown ink, pen and black ink, pen and gray ink, watercolor, and gray wash on medium, moderately textured, cream laid paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 12 1/2 x 16 1/2in. (31.8 x 41.9cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Inscribed in pen and brown ink, lower center: “Principal Story”; plan labeled in pen and brown ink, lower left: ”Coach house”, “Back rode”, “Brewhouse”, “P”, “To [...] | to clean knives”, “Scullery”, and in another hand in pen and brown ink: “open | court | for carts | &c”, “Cn”, “ashes”; in pen and brown ink, center range labeled: “Pantry”, “Kitchen”, “Butl[e]rs | Pantry”, “Best Parlour”, “Libr[a]ry”, “Common Parl[ou]r”; in pen and brown ink, lower right: “Larder”, “Housekeepers | room & store room”, “open | court”, “Bt”; in pen and brown ink, far right: “Straw”, “Saddle”, “Stable”, “muck”
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Peter N. Lindfield, Georgian Gothic: Medievalist Architecture, Furniture and Interiors, 1730-1840, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK ; Rochester, NY, p. 56, fig. 2.3, NA966.5.G66 L56 2016 (LC) (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
This drawing of Moody hall is one of a pair; the other (B1975.2.119) has a variant plan but no elevation. No Moody Hall has been identified and there is no evidence of its construction. The designer is also unidentified. Although the building displays characteristics consistent with Batty Langley’s architecture, it may be the work of a provincial architect copying from Langley’s Gothic pattern book Ancient Architecture Restored (1742). The publication features foliated crowning ornaments similar to that included here on the architraves and pediment, and plate 47 of the book features a “Gothick Temple” with the same ogival pediment pierced by a trefoil window and crowned with a foliated finial. The drawing has a ground floor plan, front elevation and section showing a three-story, five-bay house between office wings. The plan is a conventional late eighteenth-century layout, having an almost-square compact design with canted bays and attached offices. A corner chimneypiece in the library is characteristic of earlier house designs. The facade is in a Gothick style, having conventional Georgian proportions but ornamented with fanciful gothic motifs. The entrance is framed by clustered shafts and the ogival door and windows are ornamented with crockets and foliated crowns. The castellated roofline is interrupted by an ogival pediment decorated with crockets and a large foliated finial. The wings include a stable with four stalls, a brew house, and coach house. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2014