Lot 499: AUGUSTUS CHARLES PUGIN 1762-1832

watercolor, pencil and gouache on paper, signed A Pugin in ink on the reverse. Augustus Charles Pugin (1762-1832) was a French refugee who came to England following the execution of Louis XVI. He worked as a draftsman in the office of the architect John Nash, producing very good quality perspectives in watercolor for clients. He was the father of the influential 19th century designer Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, promoter of the Gothic Revival style in England. The backing of the frame with a typed letter from Ralph Hyde, Keeper of Prints and Maps, Guildhall Library: ... `The building represented in your drawing is the Auction Mart which stood opposite the eastern front of the Bank of England in Bartholomew Lane. Estates, annuities, shares in public Institutions, pictures, books, and other property were sold there by public auction. Built to the designs of John Walters 1808-1810, it was pulled down in 1865 being then replaced by a new Auction Mart in Tokenhouse Yard. An aquatint after your drawing was published in Ackermann's Repository of Arts in August 1811 with figures evidently by Rowlandson, together with a description. An aquatint of the Auction Mart Coffee Room appeared in the October issue of the Repository. Both aquatints reappeared as plates 63 and 64 in Papworth's Select Views of London in 1816.'