Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [189] Preliminary design for an exhibition drawing, Lord Chancellor's Robing Room, Court of Chancery and Vice Chancellor's Court, early June 1823

Browse

  • image SM Vol 83/46v

Reference number

SM Vol 83/46v

Purpose

[189] Preliminary design for an exhibition drawing, Lord Chancellor's Robing Room, Court of Chancery and Vice Chancellor's Court, early June 1823

Aspect

Perspective views of the Lord Chancellor's Robing Room, the Court of Chancery and the Vice Chancellor's Court, shown on a fictive unrolled sheets, with sketch plans corresponding to the views above (in pencil), almost as executed

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.

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).