[59-60] Early alternative designs for the Pitt Cenotaph, one dated 28 January 1818 (3)

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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
  - London: National Debt Redemption Office, Old Jewry, City of London: designs, working drawings and drawings for exhibition, 1817-18, 1819, 1823 (100)

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Reference number

SM (59) volume 60/176 (60) volume 60/177 (61) volume 60/178

Purpose

[59-60] Early alternative designs for the Pitt Cenotaph, one dated 28 January 1818 (3)

Aspect

59-60 Perspectival sketch sections 61 Section

Signed and dated

(59) Jan^y28^th1818

Medium and dimensions

(59) Pen, blue-grey and Indian red washes , shaded on wove paper (305 x 218) affixed at corners to p.152 of volume 60, numbered 177 (60) pen, sepia and blue-grey washes, shaded on wove paper (306 x 227) affixed at corners to p. 152 of volume 60, numbered 176 (61) pencil, sepia, raw umber, blue-grey washes, shaded with ruled and black wash border on wove paper (307 x 248) affixed at corners to p. 153 of volume 60, numbered 178

Hand

(59-60) Henry Parke 1790-1835) Day Book 'Making Views &c of / Mausoleum' (61) Edward Foxhall (1793-1862, pupil 1812-1821) or Henry Parke (1790-1835, pupil 1814-1820) ?

Notes

Soane's sections (59 and 60, drawn in perspective) use the two-storey with glass dome scheme (tribune form) that he drew out a few weeks before (18-20 December, drawings 43-45). Drawing 59 with banded rustication, curtained window, panelled door and chimneypiece gives a sense of place while drawing 60 uses the convention of sawn off masonry to indicate the plan of a pier. The designs differ at ground floor level: drawing 59 is arcaded and with piers so that the emphasis is on round-headed arches, some of them blind while drawing 60 has a central arcade but with the addition of Ionic columns and with banded rustication to the walls.
The finished drawing 61 by an office hand (Foxhall or Parke ?) does not follow the tribune theme. It consists of a single-storey space defined by four corner piers and eight Greek Doric columns (two to each side, fluted and without bases) which support an entablature which in turn supports a canopy dome with four segmental openings. At the rear is a seated statue of Pitt in Roman dress holding a book.

Level

Drawing

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

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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.

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