This rather slight drawing shows the basic elements of the central portico on the north front of Carlton House, the Prince Regent’s London home. The sprawling building on the south side of Pall Mall was designed by Henry Holland, built between 1783 and 1795, and demolished in 1826.
1 The portico was six columns wide, with a royal coat of arms in the pediment; the ground plan of the left-hand columns is indicated at the top left. They are thought to have been recycled in the east and west porticos of the National Gallery, built nearby a few years later.
2The Carlton House portico appears in a large watercolour diagram which accompanied Turner’s first perspective lecture at the Royal Academy in January 1811 (see the Introduction to the sketchbook), showing the whole of the north front with rusticated wings and its colonnaded screen and gateways in front, in which Turner combined a scale elevation with naturalistic shading (Tate
D17119; Turner Bequest CXCV 148).
3 There are further studies of Carlton House on folios 16 recto opposite, 49 verso–50 recto, 61 verso (
D07984,
D08023,
D08024,
D08039) and possibly 39 recto (
D08011).
The north façade and screen are shown in a watercolour of about 1811 by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd and in anonymous engravings published by Ackermann in 1809 and by Laurie and Whittle in 1813 (London Metropolitan Archives).
Matthew Imms
January 2012
