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Notes
The six drawings catalogued here all relate to the rooms beneath the Painted Chamber, especially the small vaulted room at the east end of the building. The drawings were all made by Charles James Richardson (1806-71), Soane's assistant, over the course of two days in March 1827. Several drawings of the Painted Chamber are reproduced in H. Colvin, "Views of the Old Palace of Westminster", Architectural History, 9, 1966, pp. 21+23-184, including copies of SM volume 50/2 and SM volume 50/4 (figs 104 and 118) as well as views of the basement by William Capon (1757-1827).
Tom Drysdale, October 2014
Level
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).
Contents of Surveys of Guy Fawkes' Chamber, March 1827 (3)
- Surveys of the room under the Painted Chamber and Guy Fawkes' Tower, 29 March 1827
- Surveys of the rooms under the Painted Chamber, 30 March 1827
- Surveys of the rooms under the Painted Chamber, 30 March 1827