Painting of Powerscourt House, Dublin???

Didnt Malton do a print of Powerscourt House

Yes – considering the rest of the airport is plastered in his images – one can safely assume it was his.
‘Malton’s Views of Dublin’ is like gold-dust to aquire.
Charlie Haughey has many of the original prints.

If its a Malton the national Gallery on Clare St will probably have gallery licensed copies for sale.

Original Malton engravings are rare enough and cost a couple of grand apiece more even if they’re an early good quality impression.

Malton’s father was a drawing master and rather a good one. Malton himself was something of a ‘git’, brought over from London by Gandon who gave him a lot of work and treated him pretty well malton was a notorious backbiter and pursued Gandon with all manner of scurrilous accusations of dirty doing as well as doing as much damage to his reputation through malicious gossip as possible – quite probably suffered from terminal knob rot – great draftsman though.

Andrew Bonar Law’s Neptune Gallery on South William St sometimes has relatively cheap (I’m a print collector so ‘relatively’ can still run into hundreds) later impressions from the original plates and it is possible to get good quality photographic repros.

Bonar Law by the way has an original book of hte original images which he was showing at the RDS antique fair last weekend. He might show it if you’re polite and interested enough.

21st October 2005

Powerscourt House is undergoing an impressive conservation or cleaning job at the minute – the adjustable scaffold unit is quite a sight!

As tends to be the case with granite when cleaned, the difference really isn’t that noticable – to the extent that the rustic weathered look is nearly more preferable:

A bit of dirt usually adds to the appeal of granite; it can take it, unlike the smooth even surfaces of Portland, lime or sand stones.

The steps of Powerscourt are very dodgy at this stage, both in structural and weathering terms – they’ll probably need replacing soon, especially given the level of traffic they endure. Indeed so much of the Wicklow granite of the building is eroding rather fast. It’s one of the few major buildings in Dublin that still has all its original granite intact so it conveys very prominantly how the stone weathers – an indication of what Connolly Station may be like in 80 years time…

It pains you to have to walk through the hallway too, as grand as it may be, but pedestrians’ shoes must absolutely destroy its beautiful stone floor, walking huge quantities of grit in off the street day in day out. It must be akin to scraping it with 100 scrubbing brushes and a couple of sacks of shattered glass 🙁
Always feel so guilty using it, but that hall’s just too tempting as a grand shortcut…

The windows are also recieving attention.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

Yes – considering the rest of the airport is plastered in his images – one can safely assume it was his.
‘Malton’s Views of Dublin’ is like gold-dust to aquire.
Charlie Haughey has many of the original prints.

the office that i work in has a full set…and yes they are original i asked..

Picked up 3 reprints from early 1900’s recently.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral,St. Stephens green & Castle yard

This site sells new copies/posters
http://posters.barnesandnoble.com/search/Results.asp?ctr=38263

Just noticed that the Castle courtyard is down as the Provost’s house on that site .
oops!

As far as I know the stonework of Powerscourt’s facade was badly damaged in an over-zealous cleaning about 25 years ago.

All of the sash windows in the upper floors of Powerscourt are the original 1760s ones, except the central gothic-arched tripartite (‘Venetian’) one. The (presumably) gothic-arched ground floor windows were replaced at some stage with plate glass. But the basement has really great original gothic-arched sashes…….250 years thick of paint layers! It’s a treat to lean over the front balustrade and look at them 😮 .

Replicas of the original gothic sashes are now going back in on the ground floor in place of what were frankly rather ugly – not to mention very strange – clunky Victorian plates as seen earlier. The new frames look great: very delicate and seemingly of hardwood given the exposed sill evident in one of the pics.

What is difficult to understand is what appears to be the very odd pane of crown glass positioned to the top of some of the windows amongst otherwise flawless modern glass. Why? And where did it come from?

There are impressive new lanterns at the main entrance too. Strangely enough the Provost’s House has had colossal lanterns installed either side of its front door over the weekend, as has the Westin to College St on a more modest scale recently…