The Parliament House-Dublin

Book Description

London: Published by I.Malton & I.Cowen Dublin, 1793. Colour-printed aquatint. Very good condition apart from some overall light soiling and a few mild vertical creases extending through the image and spanning the height of the sheet. Trimmed to the platemark on all sides. 12 1/2 x 16 7/8 inches. 12 7/8 x 17 1/4 inches. A fine plate from a second, later edition (circa 1818) of 'Picturesque Views of the City of Dublin' (circa 1818), Malton's detailed topographical and architectural survey of Georgian Dublin. Originally designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearse, the Parliament house was erected between 1729 and 1739. The east and west porticos framing its majestic facade were later added by James Gandon between 1785 and 1797. The son of the architectural draughtsman Thomas Malton, James Malton was an engraver and watercolourist, who once taught geometry and perspective and worked as a draughtsman in the office of the celebrated Irish architect James Gandon. He is best known for Picturesque and Descriptive View of the City of Dublin, a highly acclaimed series of twenty-five engravings that was published between 1792-1799. Malton's beautifully coloured prints from this work, which depict many of the impressive new public buildings erected, truly capture the dramatic architectural metamorphosis Dublin underwent in the eighteenth century. His later publications include Four Views in Devon (1800), a small collection of aquatints after F. Keenan, and Essay on British Cottage architecture (1804). Cf. Abbey, Scenery of Great Britain and Ireland in aquatint and lithography 1770-1860; cf. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs, vol. 9, p. 117; cf. Dictionary of National Biography.

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