The New Public Offices at Whitehall

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Downing Street

This engraving shows the then newly completed Treasury building in Westminster. The building is now known as the Old Treasury and mostly houses the Cabinet Office. This building was designed by the architect Charles Barry, but also incorporates parts of an earlier structure by Sir John Soane, as well as fragments of Henry VIII’s original Whitehall Palace, such as his tennis courts, a fireplace and some turrets. Numerous prints of the building, like this example, were published shortly after it opened in 1847.

The lettering on the print indicates that it was used as an illustration for the ‘Stationers' Almanack’. The Stationers' Company began publishing their ‘Almanack’ in 1747. It consisted of a single printed sheet, which included an image of a significant event of the previous year at the top and a calendar beneath, listing the dates of important forthcoming events. As in this example, the images were also published without the attached calendar. Other artists who made drawings for the Almanack include landscape engraver and draughtsman Thomas Higham and engraver and watercolour painter Edward Duncan.

The identity of artist and draughtsman J. Marchant is uncertain. One possibility is that it is Jan Marchant, an historical and still-life painter who was born in Antwerp in 1808. In 1832 Jan emigrated to France, where he became Professor of Drawing at the Cavalry School at Saumur. He died in 1864. It has alternatively been suggested that the artist’s name was Jean Marchant.
Henry Adlard was a stipple and line engraver, mainly of landscapes by contemporary artists. However, he also made numerous engravings after portraits of his contemporaries, as well as engraving bookplates. Adlard engraved some of the illustrations, drawn by William Henry Bartlett (1809-1854), for both ‘American Scenery’ (1840) written by Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867) and ‘The Ports, Harbours, Watering-Places, and Coast Scenery of Great-Britain’, by William Beattie (1842).

Places

England, London, Whitehall

Subjects

carriage, topography, townscape/cityscape, dog, man, woman, soldier, street, government building

Materials & Techniques

engraving, coloured engraving

Artist

J Marchant
Henry Adlard

Title

The New Public Offices at Whitehall

Date

published 1847-1848

Medium

Coloured engraving

Acquisition

Purchased from Harrington Bros., April 1980

GAC number

14983