bar scale of 1/4 inch to 1 foot

The Marquiss of Buckingham, Elevation of Buckingham House in Pallmall; (verso) Marquiss of Buckingham / Pall Mall

• Great Scotland Yard May 11^th 1793

Pencil, pen and grey and blue washes, within single-ruled border on wove paper with one fold mark (640 x 542)

Soane office

The house has seven bays on three storeys and is set back from the street behind a paved area. The Doric portico bridges from the house to the street and is surrounded on both sides by an iron railing that continues to the edges of the site. The railing has a lozenge and rosette pattern and it is supporting four lamp posts with the same decorative motif. The front of the house has a rusticated ground floor and plain first and attic storeys. The built facade was clad in Portland stone. Overhead, the balustraded parapet is interrupted at its centre with a Coade sculpture of Buckingham's coat of arms, supplied to Soane at a cost of forty five guineas (P. Inskip, p. 19).

The plain street front was typical of London houses. In Soane's 10th lecture at the Royal Academy, he showed his students various houses, including a drawing of Buckingham House, stating: 'None of these facades lead us to expect any internal grandeur; they only present a melancholy picture of the want of regard to architectural effect in the exterior of buildings' (Watkin, p. 630).

The drawing was made at Great Scotland Yard, where Soane worked as Clerk of the Works to St James's, Whitehall and Westminster, from October 1790 to February 1794.

D. Watkin, Sir John Soane: the Royal Academy lectures, Cambridge, 2000, p. 630; P. Inskip, 'Soane and the Grenvilles', Apollo Magazine, April 2004, p. 19.

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk