[50-52] Sketch perspective, 18 June 1800 and perspectives for re-modelling the Painted Chamber and for a lobby (3)

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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 (50) volume 69/69 (51) P153 (Breakfast Room) (52) P151 (Breakfast Room)

Purpose

[50-52] Sketch perspective, 18 June 1800 and perspectives for re-modelling the Painted Chamber and for a lobby (3)

Aspect

50 Sketch perspective with domed ceiling 51 Finished perspective with domed ceiling 52 Finished perspective with domed ceiling and with an inset plan

Inscribed

(50) House of Lords (51) (frame) Entrance to House of Lords J Soane 1794, drawing inscribed: View of a Design for one of the / principal entrances into the proposed New House of Lords / MDCCXCIV (52) (frame) Part of the new House of Lords J. Soane, 1794, plan: Part of the / House of Lords, drawing inscribed: Part of the building proposed for the new House of Lords / This View was made from the Drawings designed in obedience to an Order of a Committee of the / House of Lords and officially submitted to be honored with the approbation of His Majesty

Signed and dated

(50) June 18 1800

Medium and dimensions

(50) Pen, warm sepia and blue washes, shaded on laid paper in album with blue, pink and yellow marbled boards (368 x 234) (51) pen and coloured washes, framed (890 x 640 approximately) (52) pen and coloured washes, framed (850 x 625 approximately)

Hand

(50) Joseph Michael Gandy (1771-1843, assistant January 1798-March 1801) (51, 52) ? Henry Hake Seward (1778-1848, pupil and assistant, May 1794 - September 1808)

Notes

The inset plan of drawing 52 shows 'Part of the new House of Lords' that is a lobby with apsidal ends and the re-modelled Painted Chamber with domed and vaulted ceiling and pairs of Ionic columns. Drawing 51 shows the same rooms but a from a different view point. The design varies slightly so that, for example, the domed ceiling of drawing 51 has winged fgures in the spandrels - as does Gandy's sketch.

While the sketch perspective is certainly by Gandy, the finished perspectives are not in his hand. They have been attributed to Henry Hake Seward who was perhaps helped by Gandy. Unusually, Seward exhibited at the Royal Academy in his own name from 1797 to 1808 while still working for Soane and subsequently until 1823. He clearly had great natural talent but his perspectives do not have the 'magic' of those by Gandy. It may be significant that drawings 51 and 52 are hung above two of the doors to the Breakfast Room and so rather out of sight and less noticeable than the Gandy perspectives for the House of Lords hung in the North Drawing Room.

Literature. S.Sawyer, Soane at Westminster, PhD Columbia University, 1999, p. 225 (drawings 51,52)

Level

Drawing

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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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