Designs for a Triumphal Arch on Downing Street, December 1825 (6)

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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 for the new government buildings on Whitehall and the completion of Downing Street with a Triumphal Arch, December 1825-May 1833 (100)

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Reference number

SM (192) 49/5/23 (193) 49/5/22 (194) 49/5/21 (195) 49/5/19 (196) 49/5/20 (197) 49/5/18

Purpose

Designs for a Triumphal Arch on Downing Street, December 1825 (6)

Aspect

192 Perspective Sketch of a Design for completing the New Buildings / in Downing Street and Downing Place 193 Perspective Sketch of a Design for completing the New Buildings / in Downing Street &^c 194 Perspective Sketch of a Design for a Triumphal Arch &^c forming the / Entrance to Downing Place from S^t James's Park 195 Perspective Sketch of a Design for completing the New Buildings / in Downing Street 196 Perspective Sketch of a Design for completing the New Buildings / in Downing Street and Downing Place 197 Perspective Sketch of a Design for completing the New Buildings in Downing Street &^c

Inscribed

192-197 as above

Signed and dated

(192) 23^rd Dec^r 1825 (193) 25^th Dec^r 1825 (194) 26^th Dec^r 1825 (195, 196) 27^th Dec^r 1825 (197) 31^st Dec^r 1825

Medium and dimensions

(192-197) Pencil, sepia and blue washes with single ruled border on wove paper (639 x 453, 642 x 517, 643 x 520, 642 x 520, 643 x 517, 645 x 517)

Hand

Soane office

Watermark

(192-197) Smith & Allnutt 1823

Notes

Drawings 192-197 show the Triumphal Arch that Soane intended to build in Downing Street from Whitehall, except for drawing 194 which shows the Arch from the west (St James's Park) end of Downing Street. The Arch, which is based on the Arch of Constantine in Rome, is surmounted by an equestrian statue of either King George III or IV. The attic panel on drawing 194 depicts a group of ships. The Arch was intended to celebrate British naval victories.
Although the design of the Triumphal Arch is more or less the same in each drawing, the offices to the left (south) side of Downing Street are different. On drawings 192 and 196 the entablature recedes between the columns. Drawings 193 and 195 are similar to each other, except that the Arch is located further into Downing Street in the latter design. On drawing 196 the Downing Street frontage of the new State Paper Office retains only the outer columns. On drawing 197, this building has a bowed end.

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).