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Purpose

Illuminations for the occasion of George III's recovery from illness, 1789, and jubilee, 1809 (7)

Signed and dated

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Notes

In celebration of national and royal events, the Bank's Threadneedle Street façade was adorned with transparent paintings, garlands, stars, wreaths, and thousands of yellow lamps strung along the roofline and between the windows. In the 1790s and early nineteenth century over a dozen events were commemorated in such a way, celebrating peace and victory, the coronations of William IV in 1821 and 1831, the recovery of George III in 1789 and his Golden Jubilee in 1809. On October 4th 1809 the Bank directed Soane to prepare an illumination for the 25th of the month, to illuminate the front of the bank and the gateways on each side.

Literature: L. Brown, A catalogue of British history, 3 vols, 1980-95; D. Abramson, Building the Bank of England, 2005, pp. 141-2.

Madeleine Helmer, 2010

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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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Contents of Illuminations for the occasion of George III's recovery from illness, 1789, and jubilee, 1809 (7)