Working drawings for columns, and architraves over windows, August 1824 (4)

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / Working drawings for columns, and architraves over windows, August 1824 (4)

Browse

Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices, Whitehall & Downing Street: designs for new offices and scheme for the improvement of Downing Street, 1823-33 (284)
    - Designs and working drawings for the new Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices, December 1823-October 1824 (106)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM (102) 49/1/5 (103) 49/1/31 (104) 49/1/4 (105) 49/1/3

Purpose

Working drawings for columns, and architraves over windows, August 1824 (4)

Aspect

102 Plan of fluted column; (verso) unfinished pencil sketch of a bust 103 Detail of Architrave of Upper Windows &^cwith Section through the Sill and Section through the Window Head 104 Detail of capital 105 Detail of Architrave over Column

Scale

(102) ½ Full Size (103, 105) Full Size (104) ½ full size

Inscribed

102 Flutes of Columns, Upper diameter 2f^t 2 inches / Lower diameter 2f^t 6 inches 103 as above, Board of Trade, Sinking of 2 / Q[uer]^y Rustic, Top Rustic, Sinking of / Rustic, Necking 105 as above, Board of Trade, labelled: Cornice of the Column

Signed and dated

(102) L.I.F. 6^h Aug^t 1824 (103) 9^th Aug^st 1824 (105) Lincolns Inn Fields / 11^th August / 1824

Medium and dimensions

(102) Pen and pink wash on wove paper (444 x 544) (103) pen, pink and sepia washes, pricked for transfer on two sheets of wove paper, affixed, with one fold mark (648 x 972) (104) pencil and pen on wove paper (541 x 758) (105) pen, pricked for transfer on wove paper (740 x 533)

Hand

(102, 103) David Mocatta (1806-82, pupil 1821-27) (104, 105) Stephen Burchell (1806-?, pupil 1823-28)

Watermark

(103-105) Smith & Allnutt 1820

Notes

The upper window shown in drawing 103 is chamfered and has concave and cyma recta mouldings. Drawings 104 and 105 show some of the signature features of the order of the Temple of Jupiter Stator (Castor and Pollux), such as the intertwined scrolls in the centre of the capital and the elaborately-decorated architrave. Further drawings of the capital and cornice were made in September 1824 (q.v. drawings 109-110).
'The verso of drawing 102 seems to be a rough sketch of a cast of Antinous as Bacchus taken from the Lansdowne Antinous in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (M827), later trimmed and reused for the Board of Trade drawing. M827 was in the collection by 1825 when it is shown in a watercolour of the Dome Area. The downcast gaze of the bust is distinctive, as is the indication of the curly hair / ivy wreath - which on an initial glance at the sketch looks like hair. The identification is not conclusive - the top of the bust appears in the wrong relationship to the head and the chin is perhaps a little too pointed - but the sketch was rejected and reused.' (Helen Dorey, October 2013)

Level

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

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).