Where London Stood: John Soane and Joseph Gandy

Joseph Gandy (1830) Cut-away perspective depicting Bank of England as Pompeii-esque ruin (Darley, 146)

Soane was a British architect of note during his own lifetime, and had a large part in designing the building for the Bank of England in London. Soane asked Gandy, a close associate, to produce a series of paintings of his designs for the Bank. The resulting series included a cut-away watercolour of the building which looks remarkably like some of the larger views of Pompeii (although the only real ruins on display are in the top right hand corner), and a romanticised ruin of the building's dome.

Soane himself was also responsible for a rather interesting work of fiction - "Crude Hints towards the History of My House". Writing in the early part of the 1810s, he imagines returning to his home in the 1830s to find it a dilapidated ruin. Darley ties the book's melancholy mood to what Soane believed to be failures in his personal life: his sons did not pursue careers in architecture, his friendship with Turner broke-up, and Soane had an ongoing argument with the Royal Academy of Architects (Darley, 214-5). We can read the ruins of his house as the ruins of Soane's ambitions.

The Bank of England

Joseph Gandy The Bank of England in Ruins. Watercolour, Soane Museum (Zucker, 156)

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