Thosel, Dublin

Book Description

London: Published by Jas.Malton & G. 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 3/4 x 17 1/4 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. Located at the intersection of Shop and West Streets, the Tholsel (city hall) was erected 1770 on the site where the medieval wooden Tholsel once stood. This beautiful limestone building was the center of Dublin's municipal authority as well as a prime social meeting point until the nineteenth century. 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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