View of the New Public Offices, Whitehall

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Downing Street

This print shows the Treasury, as rebuilt by John Soane between 1824 and 1827. Whitehall is busy with pedestrians and a large stage coach, pulled by four horses, passes the building, carrying a female passenger.

Thomas Higham was both the artist and engraver of this work. It was published as an illustration for ‘The Stationers' Almanack’ in 1827. The Stationers' Company (the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, one of the Livery Companies of the City of London) began publishing the ‘Stationers' Almanack’ in 1747. The ‘Almanack’ 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 draughtsman J. Marchant (active 1840-50) and engraver and watercolour painter Edward Duncan (1803-1882).

Landscape engraver and draughtsman Thomas Higham was born in Suffolk. After serving an apprenticeship with antiquary and engraver John Greig, his earliest published works were plates for James Storer’s ‘Antiquarian Itinerary’ (1815). Higham also both drew and engraved plates for the ‘Stationer’s Almanack’ from c.1826-39. In the late 1820s he began using steel plates and some of his earliest such works were for James Elmes’s ‘Metropolitan Improvements’ (1827-32). Among his most admired prints are those after the work of J. M. W. Turner. Higham exhibited at the Society of British Artists, London, in 1825, 1826 and 1830. He was an auditor of the Artist’s Annuity Fund. Higham was a widow by the time of his death in Islington at the age of c.49.

Places

England, London, Whitehall: Soane's Treasury Building, Whitehall: Great Close Tennis Court, Whitehall

Subjects

carriage, horseback, topography, townscape/cityscape, dog, horse, man, woman, basket, railing, lamp post, street, bollard, pavement, government building, portico, steps, door, window, balcony

Materials & Techniques

engraving, coloured engraving

Artist

Thomas Higham (1796 - 1844)

Title

View of the New Public Offices, Whitehall

Date

Medium

Coloured engraving

Acquisition

Origin uncertain

GAC number

0/693