[28-29] Incomplete alternative designs (2)

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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: Palace of Westminster: designs for alterations and additions, 1793-1828 (499)
    - London: House of Lords, Palace of Westminster: official (mostly domeless) designs, July 1794 - February 1795 (134)

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Reference number

SM (28) 36/4/23 (29) 36/4/20

Purpose

[28-29] Incomplete alternative designs (2)

Aspect

28 Plan of ground floor 29 Plan of ground floor with erasures and (verso) interior perspective of the King's Robing Room

Scale

(28-29) bar scales of 1/10 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

(28) (pencil) Lords (of Court of Requests) (29) (pencil) Hall, Black Rod, Archbishops, Bishops, Lord G^tChamberlain and Kings Robing Room

Medium and dimensions

(28) Pen, sepia, red, black and raw umber washes with quadruple-ruled and black wash border on wove paper (697 x 494) (29) pen, sepia, black and raw umber washes with quadruple-ruled and black wash border on wove paper (629 x 487)

Hand

(28) ? Frederick Meyer (1775-?, pupil April 1791-1796) (29) ? Meyer with Soane's pencil labels

Notes

Drawing 28 shows a rather minimal scheme. The Court of Requests, Painted Chamber, old House of Lords with four adjacent offices, Prince's Gallery and the old Lords Committee Room are kept. This last was sometimes retained (drawings 10-13, 21-27) and sometimes not. The Court of Requests and the old Lords have some partitions and the first of these is labelled (in feint pencil) 'Lords'. Other drawings that re-used the Court of Requests for the new House of Lords are drawings 10-13, 21 and 22. Porte-cochères and porticoes are lacking but the route to the re-located House of Lords would be very direct. Drawing 29 is for a larger scheme. The King's processional route begins southwards with a portico to a projecting hall with a double staircase, into a large, domed, lobby that precedes the Painted Chamber which leads into the new rectilinear, House of Lords that appears to be domed. Neither design corresponds with previous or later designs and, lacking labels, were presumably abandoned.

On the verso of drawing 29 is an interior perspective of the King's Robing Room. It does not relate to the plan shown on the recto. The design shows a shallow cross vaulted ceiling to the fore and a canopy ceiling to the rear with a Corinthian screen separating them. For a corresponding but more finished interior perspective of the King's Robing room see drawing 105.

S. Sawyer, 'Soane at Westminster'. PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1999, p. 168 puts drawing 29 (with 26 and 27) as scheme 'A3' in Soane's sequence of designs for the House of Lords.

Level

Drawing

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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).