James Gandon

Life
1743-1821 [vars. 1842, 1823]; articled to Sir William Chambers; published continuation of Campbell’s Vitruvius Brittanicus [sic], with John Woolfe (1767-71); gold medal for architecture, Royal Academy, 1768; designed Dublin buildings incl. Screen Wall of House of Parliament, 1785; Four Courts, 1786; King’s Inn’s (1795-59); original member of RIA; a life published Thomas J. Mulvany (1846) was prepared from papers collected by his son and namesake (1773-1851). ODNB DIB BREF

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Criticism
  • Thomas J. Mulvany, The Life of James Gandon, Esq., M.R.I.A., F.R.S., etc., architect, with original notices of contemporary artists and fragments of essays from materials collected and arranged by his son, James Gandon / prepared for publication by Thomas J. Mulvany (Dublin: Hodges & Smith [printed at Dublin UP], 1846), xvi, 297pp., illus. & port.; and Do., [facs. rep.], with index by Maurice Craig (London: Cornmarket Press 1969) (16), v-xvi, 297 (34)p., port.; 23cm.
  • Constantia Maxwell, ‘James Gandon, An English Architect 1781-1823’ [chap.], in The Stranger in Ireland (1958), pp.179-88.
  • Edward McPartland, James Gandon: Vitruvius Hibernicus (Zwemmer; 1985).
  • Hugo Duffy, James Gandon and His Times (Kinsale: Gandon [q.d.]), 288pp. [bibl. pp. 279-281].
See also Steve McDonogh, A Visitor’s Guide to the Dingle Peninsula (Brandon).

Mulvany’s Life of Gandon [1846], containing Gandon’s essay on the progress of architecture (243ff.), was reviewed by Samuel Ferguson in Dublin University Magazine, clxxiv (1847), pp.693-708. (Cited W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition, 1984).

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References
Brian de Breffny, ed., Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London: Thames & Hudson 1983), writes: continued Franco-Roman Neo-Classicism of Chambers; extended Campbell’s Vitruvius Brittanicus with John Woolfe (vols. in 1767 and 1771); invited by Rt. Hon. John Beresford to settle in Dublin, refusing At. Petersburg; Custom House (1781), embellished by Edward Smyth; Four Courts (1786); other works, King’s Inns; Carlisle (O’Connell) Bridge; adds. to Rotunda, and mansion at Emo, Co. Laois, for Lord Portarlington.

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Notes
Nathaniel Hone: Hone’s engraved portrait of Gandon shows the subject half-length, seated, with view on Custom House from the south-west; rep. in ‘James Gandon, An English Architect 1781-1823’, in Constantia Maxwell, The Stranger in Ireland (1958), p.179-88.

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