Design for the interior of a new House of Lords, 10 June 1825

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / Design for the interior of a new House of Lords, 10 June 1825

Browse

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: alterations and additions, 1817-28 (220)
      - New committee rooms and library, 1824-27 (56)
        Designs for new committee rooms and a new House of Lords (sections and interior perspectives), June 1825

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM 51/3/47

Purpose

Design for the interior of a new House of Lords, 10 June 1825

Aspect

Section through the House of Lords looking east with part plan of the ceiling

Scale

bar scale of 1/5 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

labelled (pencil): Col or C (10 times) and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

10 June 1825 - 11 June 1825
10/6/25 and 11/6/25

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, sepia, pink, blue and yellow washes, pricked for transfer on wove paper (549 x 732)

Hand

Joseph Michael Gandy ARA (1771 - 1843)

Notes

This is a counterpart to SM 51/3/54, another sectional design, and shows a section through the House of Lords looking towards the river. The hipped roof outlined in pencil on the other drawing is present here. A small detail at the top of the sheet shows part of a panelled ceiling with a rosette - presumably this is for the ceiling of the chamber. A figure in red robes is provided for scale.

"The indirect lighting above the Chamber's east end not only provided an aura of sacral mystery but also preserved the east wall as a solid, austere backdrop against which to view the throne and its ornate, Neoclassical canopy". According to Sean Sawyer, the design of the throne and other ornamentation drew inspiration from the Napoleonic tradition - especially the work of Chalgrin and Percier and Fontaine (S. Sawyer, Soane at Westminster, PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1999, p. 750).

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).