Marine School, Dublin, Looking up the Liffey

Book Description

London: Jas. Malton, 1796. Colour-printed aquatint. Good condition apart from some light soiling, minor foxing in the margins and the image, and a few mild creases extending into the image. A small bit of excess blue ink in the right margin. Trimmed to within the platemark on all sides. 11 1/8 x 15 3/4 inches. 12 3/8 x 16 7/8 inches. A fine plate from the first edition of 'Picturesque Views of the City of Dublin', Malton's detailed topographical and architectural survey of Georgian Dublin. As Dublin expanded and evolved during the eighteenth-century, several improvements were made on the Liffey, which became a bustling trade route. The river was embanked, docks were constructed in its north and south banks, and trading areas sprung up on both its sides. Several bridges, including Sarah Bridge and Carlisle Bridge, were also erected over the Liffey to facilitate movement between north and south Dublin. 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 originally 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.

Not sure what some of these terms mean? Look it up in our glossary.