[354] Record drawing, New Law Courts, c September 1826

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Palace of Westminster: The New Law Courts, surveys and designs, 1820-32 (507)
    - New Law Courts - Second Scheme, 1821-29 (345)
      - Northern Range - Court of King's Bench, 1823-29 (207)
        Projecting Curved Corners Scheme, c 1824-26 (2)

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Reference number

SM 53/8/25

Purpose

[354] Record drawing, New Law Courts, c September 1826

Aspect

Elevation of the north façade of the Court of King's Bench looking south, with part of Westminster Hall and linking range, as originally part executed

Scale

bar scale of ¹/₁₀ inch to 1 foot

Signed and dated

c/09/1826
dated in accordance with SM 53/8/21

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, sepia wash, on laid paper (473 x 292)

Hand

Attributed to Charles James Richardson (1806 - 1871), draughtsman

Watermark

Notes

The stylistic characteristics of draughtsmanship and the modelling of wash suggest Richardson's hand. The New Palace Yard façade is shown with projecting corners, given extra visual strength by engaged pilasters; the latter introduced by Soane as a penultimate revision prior to adopting disengaged columns. This elevation corresponds with the plan taken at first floor level shown in SM 53/3/25. The corners are record a variant design (in pencil) for square turrets terminated with sculptures standing on domed caps, which are shown in drawing SM 53/8/43.

The design is a variant of that shown in SM 53/8/20, with the balustrade replaced by a solid parapet and the entablature breaking outwards over pillasters which demark the curved corners. The latter project forwards creating the sense of supportive weight wanting in some alternative variants. This is drawn over an erased variant scheme which closely resembles that shown in SM 53/8/22, and variant schemes in the same hand (see SM/53/8/27 and SM/53/8/30).

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation. This catalogue of Soane’s designs for the New Law Courts was generously funded by The Worshipful Company of Mercers and The Pilgrim Trust.

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).