99-100] Preliminary drawings of the Pitt Cenotaph made for publication, 1827 (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
  - 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 (99) 48/8/1 (100) 48/8/2

Purpose

99-100] Preliminary drawings of the Pitt Cenotaph made for publication, 1827 (2)

Aspect

99 Interior perspective of the ground and first floor of the Cenotaph looking towards the entrance hall 100 Interior perspective of the ground floor of the Cenotaph with Pitt's statue

Inscribed

99 (pencil, Wightwick) Redemption Office, (brown pen) pl III

Signed and dated

(99) signed G. Wightwick and datable to 1827 when George Wightwick was Soane's secretary for three months

Medium and dimensions

(99) Pencil on wove paper (262 x 202) (100) pencil on wove paper (216 x 280)

Hand

George Wightwick (1802-1872)

Notes

These drawings, presumably made on site, record the interior of the Pitt Cenotaph four years after it was completed. A comparison with the interior perspective (plate XLVIII**** in the 1832 edition) in Soane's Designs for public and private buildings first published in 1828, suggests that Wightwick (or another hand) made a further perspective since the viewpoint differs from those catalogued above.
Wightwick, after his brief stay in Soane's employ where 'for several months [he] fulfilled the exacting duties of amanuensis and companion to the eccentric old gentleman' (H. Colvin, op. cit.), set up practice in Plymouth. Here he followed Soane's example of having his pupils make fair drawings from the originals that were then bound into five folio volumes and bequeathed to the Royal Institute of British Architects where they still remain.
Literature: H. Colvin, Biographical dictionary of British architects, 1600-1840, 4th ed., 2008) and for Wightwick see John O'Callaghan's catalogue in J. Lever (ed.) Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, T-Z, 1984, pp. 222-241.

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.

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