Perspective of Royal Palace, C. J. Richardson, as an assistant with Sir John Soane, c.1827

Perspective of Royal Palace, Constitution Hill

This drawing depicts Soane's design for a Royal Palace of 1821 destined for Constitution Hill. The Palace was to be located roughly where Constitution Arch stands today. Soane was convinced of the feasibility of his vast scheme to the extent that in 1827, he offered George IV the bird's-eye perspective that had appeared in the recent RA show. Soane also followed up by centring a book (Soane 1827) around the palace and related works. He gave it the title Designs for Public Improvements in London and Westminster, 1827. According to several accounts, this limited edition ran to about 25 copies, including the one presented to George IV and still in the Royal Library at Windsor. Richardson extra-illustrated it profusely with original watercolours, a number of which relate to copies he kept aside for himself. Thus this Richardson view and 3306:28 are close to two at Windsor, one of them dated 10 May 1827, a matter of days after the less finished version (3306:28) retained by Richardson.
This drawing was made into a lithograph by Richardson. In that form it appeared in the first and second editions of the book that now bore the title Designs for Public and Private Buildings (1828 and 1832). Soane's strategm to impress the Kind failed. Buckingham Palace was patched together by Soane's rival John Nash with fairly disasterous results both structurally and in terms of expense.

This drawing was pasted into a copy of Sir John Soane's book Designs for Public and Private Buildings owned by Soane's assistant Charles James Richardson. Richardson built up a large collection of originals and copies (many of which he executed himself) of his master's designs, and distributed the bulk of them into two folio volumes, interspersed with the printed pages of the book. These volumes were bought by the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) in 1863.

This drawing is one of a series of designs by Sir John Soane (on 5 sheets, 3306:26-30) for a Royal Palace, drawn after Soane was named architect of Buckingham House in 1815 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1821, but never built.

3306:27