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  • image SM 36/2/15

Reference number

SM 36/2/15

Purpose

[15] Variant design for the ground floor of a new Parliament House

Aspect

Ground floor plan

Scale

bar scale of 5/9 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

labelled: (pencil) River Thames, 300 feet, 232

Signed and dated

  • 1734-39
    circa

Medium and dimensions

Pen and sepia (brown) wash, pricked for transfer within single ruled border on laid paper (374 x 507)

Hand

William Kent (1685 - 1748)

Watermark

fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche / LVG

Notes

While substantially similar to the initial ground floor plan (drawing [11]), there are some differences to the design. The most significant are the enlarging of the two courts in the eastern half of the building and the addition of a portico on the river side.

Both drawings [15] and [16] have been taken to suggest a phased construction as the western part of the building is shown in outline only.

(Salmon, pp. 339-43)

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).