Drawings of Lothbury Court, possibly for exhibition at the Royal Academy (2)

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - Bank of England, City of London for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, 1788-1834 (1352)
    - 1791-1801 Rebuilding of offices in the east wing and north-east extension (430)
      - Lothbury Court and surrounding offices, 1797-1801 (109)

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Reference number

SM (86) 12/3/10 (87) 12/3/13

Purpose

Drawings of Lothbury Court, possibly for exhibition at the Royal Academy (2)

Aspect

86 Perspective looking north of the Court with colonnades on the east and west sides surmounted by urns (as in the executed Court), staircases ascending from the courtyard up to both east and west sides (similar to executed design), with two statues of seated lions at the top of both staircases; the north side of the Court (south façade of the Porter's Lodge) has four raised Corinthian columns placed evenly and surmounted by figurative statues; an equestrian statue surmounts the attic 87 Perspective looking south of the Court, showing east and west sides of the court similar to drawing 86, with the south side consisting of a semicircular-headed entrance between twin raised Corinthian columns, each supporting a figurative statue; an additional pedestal on top of the centre of the attic supports fluted pilasters capped by antefixes and, in the centre, a statue of a seated female flanked to either side by lions

Inscribed

86 (Bailey) View of a Design for the "Lothbury Court" at the Bank of England ---8 (sheet damaged, probably reads 1798)

Hand

(86-87) Soane office (Thomas Malton? see Notes)

Notes

A drawing similar to drawing 87 was published 1 March 1801 by Thomas Malton (fl. 1748-1804) entitled Lothbury Court, Bank. In contrast to the published drawing, the ornament has been altered within the niches of the entry gate.

Soane exhibited a 'view of one of the interior quadrangles of the Bank of England' at the Royal Academy in 1807 (1060). Staffage was probably added by the painter Antonio Van Assen (exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1778 and 1804).

Literature

(87) F. Sands, Fanciful Figures: people in architectural drawings, 2024, pp. 42-43

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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).