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Inscribed
Signed and dated
- c.1769
Medium and dimensions
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Notes
The Soane Museum elevation is close to an engraved elevation also at the RIBA (SC 71/5(3) originally published, 'Front of the Sessions House in the Old Bailey... Marc 31 1772' in W. Maitland, The History of London... continued until the year 1772 (plate 130).
However, the Soane Museum's elevation and the engraved elevation differ from the contract drawing. For example, instead of a Tuscan portico in antis with two columns and two antae, coupled columns replace the antae (making six columns in all), and an elaborate pedestal supporting a statue of Justice has been added over the entrance. There are several working drawings for Tuscan coupled columns in the Corporation of London Records Office including one dated 'May 26 1770' (CLRO, Surveyor's Justice Plans No.219) though none for a pedestal. A plan for additions, c.1805 (CLRO, Surveyor's Justice Plans no.238) also shows coupled columns, so it can be assumed that these were carried out and the Soane Museum's drawing and the engraving are 'as built'.
An earlier design in a rough pencil elevation in Dance's hand shows the principal front with a portico in antis to the three-bay centre that has three-bay wings (CLRO, Surveyor's Justice Plans No.162). The composition and fenestration are conservative and without, for example, the rustication, blind arches and keystones of contract drawing. The circular windows over the secondary entrances shown in the Soane Museum's drawing and the 1772 engraving are included in this rough pencil elevation though not in the contract elevation.
An elevation catalogued as 'Facade of Public Hall' by George Dance, c.1780, in the Victoria & Albert Museum (Prints & Drawings Department, 3336: QIB, reproduced in H.Rosenau, 'George Dance the Younger', Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, LIV, 3rd series, 1947, figs 9 and 12) in an unsigned, uninscribed finished drawing in an office hand (James Peacock?) with pencil amendments by Dance. The design is conservative with a four-column Ionic portico, the tympanum embellished with palm fronds and the frieze with unsuitably lighthearted husk festoons and ribbons. Dance has rouged in a dome that reappears in a small sketch on the verso for a composition that includes four pairs of columns and a rusticated door. Both recto and verso designs lack the upper storey of all the other drawings but the distinctive feature of two separate front stairs that took prisoners to and from the court rooms appears and suggests that the Victoria & Albert Museum may be an early design for the Newgate Sessions House.
Verso
Rough faint elevation of a three-storey three-bay front with giant order and emphatic frieze drawn by Dance?, rough faint details of step with cut string. Tuscan capital and unidentified timber detail Inscribed: calculations and see above Pencil
Level
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).