Presentation drawing of a design for the New State Paper Office, 1830-31

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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: New State Paper Office, Duke Street, Westminster, 1829-34 (207)

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Reference number

SM (76) P90

Purpose

Presentation drawing of a design for the New State Paper Office, 1830-31

Aspect

76 Perspective from Duke Street with plan and section through the rear (west side) of the building

Medium and dimensions

Pen, grey and sepia washes on wove paper (735 x 1295)

Hand

Joseph Michael Gandy (1771-1843)

Notes

Drawing 76 was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1833 (No 996). However, the drawing shows the building as designed in 1830-1 and not quite as executed. The design of the building most closely matches drawing 73 (q.v.) and although that drawing shows the north elevation, which is not visible on drawing 76, both designs share common features. The window surrounds on the ground and first floors, for instance, are identical to those on drawing 73. The same can be said of the chimney stacks, the quoins and the 'pantiled' eaves. Designs from the middle of 1831 show that by that time all of these features had changed. The design of the three central windows on the south front had also evolved.

Nicholas Savage writes that drawing 76 'is probably unique in the history of architectural representation in showing the ground plan, section and view of a building as distinct images combined into a single, unified space' (N. Savage, 'Exhibiting architecture: strategies of representation in English architectural exhibition drawings, 1760-1836', in D. H. Solkin (ed.), Art on the Line, 2001, p. 211).

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).