1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dance (family)

​DANCE, the name of an English family distinguished in architecture, art and the drama. George Dance, the elder (1700–1768), obtained the appointment of architect to the city of London, and designed the Mansion House (1739); the churches of St Botolph, Aldgate (1741), St Luke’s, Old Street; St Leonard, Shoreditch; the old excise office; Broad Street; andother public works of importance. He died on the 8th ofFebruary 1768. His eldest son, James Dance (1722–1744), was born on the 17th of March 1722, and educated at the Merchant Taylors’ School and St John’s College, Oxford, which he left before graduating. He took the name of Love, and became an actor and playwright of no great merit. In the former capacity he was for twelve years connected with Drury Lane theatre. He wrote “an heroic poem” on Cricket, about 1740, and a volumeof Poems on Several Occasions (1754), and a number of comedies—theearliest Pamela (1742).

George Dance’s third son, Sir Nathaniel Dance-Holland,Bart. (1735–1811), was born on the 18th of May 1735, andstudied art under Francis Hayman, and in Italy, where he metAngelica Kauffmann, to whom he was devotedly and hopelesslyattached. From Rome he sent home “Dido and Aeneas”(1763), and he continued to paint occasional historical picturesof the same quasi-classic kind throughout his career. On hisreturn to England he took up portrait-painting with greatsuccess, and contributed to the first exhibition of the RoyalAcademy, of which he was a foundation member, full-lengthportraits of George III. and his queen. These, and his portraitsof Captain Cook and of Garrick as Richard III., engraved byDixon, are his best-known works. Himself a rich man, in 1790he married a widow with £15,000 a year, dropped his profession,and became M.P. for East Grinstead, taking the additional nameof Holland. He was made a baronet in 1800. He died on the15th of October 1811, leaving a fortune of £200,000.

George Dance’s fifth and youngest son, George Dance, theyounger (1741–1825), succeeded his father as city surveyor andarchitect in 1768. He was then only twenty-seven, had spentseveral years abroad, chiefly in Italy with his brother Nathaniel,and had already distinguished himself by designs for BlackfriarsBridge sent to the 1761 exhibition of the Incorporated Society ofArtists. His first important public work was the rebuildingof Newgate prison in 1770. The front of the Guildhall was alsohis. He, too, was a foundation member of the Royal Academy,and for a number of years the last survivor of the forty originalacademicians. His last years were devoted to art rather than toarchitecture, and after 1798 his Academy contributions consistedsolely of chalk portraits of his friends, seventy-two of which wereengraved and published (1808–1814). He resigned his office in1815, and after many years of illness died on the 14th of January1825, and was buried in St Paul’s. His son, Charles Dance(1794–1863), was for thirty years registrar, taxing officer andchief clerk of the insolvent debtors’ court, retiring, when it wasabolished, on an allowance. In collaboration with J. R. Planchéand others, or alone, he wrote a great number of extravaganzas,farces and comediettas. He was one of the first, if not the first,of the burlesque writers, and was the author of those producedso successfully by Madame Vestris for years at the Olympic.Of his farces, Delicate Ground, Who Speaks First?, A MorningCall and others are still occasionally revived. He died on the6th of January 1863.