Sketch design, January 1796

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- 'Original Sketches / Miscellaneous / Architectural / Subjects': album with 195 drawings by Soane, Dance, Holland and others, dated c.1757 to 1818 (volume 42)
  - Volume 42/18: John Soane (1753-1837): London: Bullion Gateway, Lothbury, Bank of England, c. January 1796

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Reference number

SM volume 42/18

Purpose

Sketch design, January 1796

Aspect

Rough elevation showing a central arch with a Corinthian tetrastyle 'portico in antis' raised on a tall base on either side, and overall a tall parapet with panels flanked by fluted pilaster-strips and four sculpted figures

See Bank of England, drawing 6 in scheme 2:5 (q.v.)

Signed and dated

datable to January 1796

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brush with brown ink, shaded on laid paper (118 x 182) pasted down on wove paper (247 x 339) with drawings 19 and 20

Hand

Soane

Watermark

(cut) Patch

Notes

This sketch elevation is related to a sketch detail for the parapet in the Victoria & Albert Museum (see P.du Prey, Sir John Soane, 1985, series of 'Catalogues of architectural drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum', catalogue 176) which develops the detailsof the parapet and is dated on the verso, 25 January 1796. Both drawings were superseded by a two-faced model of the Bullion gateway (SM M1375) of c. 1796 (for illustration see M.Richardson and M.Stevens (eds), John Soane architect: master of space and light, 1999, p.234, fig.135) that has some differences. Thus the model has a pediment over the arch, ruled, banded rustication has been introduced, and the treatment of the parapet wall is more austere; the designer has employed a stele-like motif of short fluted pilasters and acroterion with antefixa cresting.
A plan of the Bank (SM 9/4/31) dated 12 September 1797 shows the Bullion Gateway with twin lodges behind (apparently used as Soane's Bank of England office), giving on to Lothbury Court and thence the Bullion Court.

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).