Scale
to a scale
Inscribed
Sundry Sketches of the Law Courts at Westminster by Joseph Gandy ARA / Ante Room / Chancellors / Vice Chancellor / (pencil) Plan (x 3)
Signed and dated
- 01/06/1823 - 31/06/1823
June 1823.
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, wash and pen, partly within single border on laid paper (567 x 387)
Hand
Joseph Michael Gandy ARA (1771 - 1843), draughtsman
Watermark
Weatherley & Lane / 1818
Notes
This is a preliminary compositional study for an elaborate drawing recording the three main interior spaces within the southern part of the New Law Courts, which at the time of this drawing were under construction. The whole is conceived as three unrolled drawings, set against a dark background. To weight the composition at its base, and provide more direct architectural information, the respective plans for each view have been lightly sketched; clearly as an afterthought. The same composition is more highly realised in drawing SM Vol 83/64, where the cropping suggested by the pencil border shown here is followed. All three perspective views of these interiors would provide the subjects for meticulously realised watercolours by Gandy *[cross-references to be included].*
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation.
This catalogue of Soane’s designs for the New Law Courts was generously funded by The Worshipful Company of Mercers and The Pilgrim Trust.
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
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it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance
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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
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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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