In the 1790s a young artist decided to create a portrait of Dublin. James Malton’s timing was impeccable, as the second city of the British Empire was then among the most splendid in Europe, before Dublin went into a long decline after the Act of Union in 1800.

Malton died in obscurity at the age of thirty-eight, and little is now known of him. However, today we owe the very idea of Georgian Dublin to this remarkable artist and his famous series of twenty-five prints, A Picturesque and Descriptive View of the City of Dublin. His prints, including those of Trinity College, the Four Courts, the Custom House, St Patrick’s Cathedral and St Stephen’s Green, are admired by millions every year, and have become, as the Irish Times noted, ‘ubiquitous to the point of invisibility’.

With a playful commentary on each print from Trevor White, Director of the Little Museum of Dublin, and with essays from distinguished historians including David Dickson and Kathryn Milligan, this book explores Malton’s life and times, the social fabric of Dublin and the political and economic turmoil of the time of the prints, and of course the buildings and scenes he depicted.

Presented here in a beautiful hardback edition, Malton’s Views of Dublin will be an ideal gift for anyone wanting to have their own keepsake of this amazing series of prints and the Georgian city of Dublin they capture.

Contents:

- Introduction by Diarmuid Ó Gráda: ‘The Great Beauty’ – sets out the social history of the Georgian Dublin of the 1790s

- Views 1–25: full page reproduction of each of the prints, with facing page commentary by Trevor White

- David Dickson: ‘Best of Times, Worst of Times’ – an essay on the Dublin of the 1790s, convulsed by political repression, popular disaffection and economic crisis

- Graham Hickey: ‘The Devil in the Detail’ – examines the architectural and streetscape detail in Malton’s Views

- Merlo Kelly: ‘Creating a Route to the Castle’ – looks at the work of the Wide Streets Commission, and the creation of Parliament St, with the importance of Malton’s view capturing the new street

- Kathryn Milligan: ‘Pineapples, Posters and Promenades: James Malton in Dublin’ – examines the commerce of this period of Dublin, and the way the Views positioned Dublin as a cosmopolitan city

- Samuel John Neele’s 1797 map of Dublin