[23-27] Sketch perspectives of domed House of Lords by J. M. Gandy, 1 March 1800 and finished perspectives (5)

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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: designs for alterations and additions, 1793-1828 (499)
    - London: House of Lords, Palace of Westminster: unofficial (mostly domed) designs, 1793 - May 1794 and after February 1795 (58)

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Reference number

SM (23) volume 69/58 (24) volume 69/59 (25) volume 69/60 (26) 16/3/13 (27) 16/3/14

Purpose

[23-27] Sketch perspectives of domed House of Lords by J. M. Gandy, 1 March 1800 and finished perspectives (5)

Aspect

23 River front and principal front 24 River front and principal front 25 River front and principal front 26 River front and principal front in a setting with staffage (barge with blue ensign) 27 River front and principal front in a setting with staffage (figures, barge with blue ensign)

Scale

Inscribed

(23-25) House of Lords, (25) (pencil) * omit vide Ge- (illegible) / Drawer (26) (on building) LABITUR ET LABETUR OMNE VOLUBILIS AEVUM (still glides the river and ever shall - Horace Ep.1.2.40) (26, verso) Lecture 1817 and 6^thLecture N^o72 1819 (27) View of a Design for a new House of Lords

Signed and dated

(23) March 1 1800 (24, 25) March 1^st 1800 (27) March 1^st 1800 (added)

Medium and dimensions

(23-25) Pen, raw umber and sepia washes, shaded on laid paper in volume 69, pp.58-60 (369 x 232) (26) pen, raw umber, sepia, burnt umber, blue and red washes with ruled and black wash border on stout wove paper (608 x 1055) (27) pen, raw umber, sepia, burnt umber, blue and red washes with double ruled and sepia wash border on wove paper (698 x 1238)

Hand

(23-25) J.M.Gandy (1771-1843, assisted Soane January 1798-March 1801) (26-27) Gandy with Henry Hake Seward (1778-1848, pupil then assistant May 1794 - September 1808)

Notes

Essentially the same design as drawings 17-20, Gandy has (in drawing 23) removed the six-bay, projecting screen or colonnade of the river front and substituted a ten-column in antis screen that in drawing 24 becomes a ten columns and two pilasters projecting screen and then in drawing 25 becomes a projecting eight-column screen. A design that is maintained by the finished drawing 26 but becomes six columns in drawing 27. In fact, only the principal elevation has a portico since to make the distinction clear, the river front has a two-storey screen at first and second floor levels and is entered by a door in the rusticated basement. Presumably the design interventions were Gandy's own contribution, the monolithic approach of drawing 23 is striking.

Drawing 27 was, according to an inscription on the verso, used as demonstration drawing 'N^o 72' in Soane's sixth Royal Academy lecture where he contrasted a theoretical design for a 'Senate House', made when he was in Italy in 1778-9 with a practical design 'made in advanced life'.

For Soane's student design see: Soane's architectural education: Royal Academy and Italy including measured drawings: Preliminary designs, some by George Dance, final design exhibited at the Royal Academy, record drawing, and perspectives by J. M. Gandy and George Bailey, for a British Senate House 1778-1779 and later (16)

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).