Drawings of the Principal Antique Buildings of Ireland: National Library of Ireland MS 1958 Tx

by Gabriel Beranger

One of the National Museum of Ireland's most treasured collections of eighteenth-century watercolours is by Gabriel Beranger, a Dutchman who spent all his adult life in Ireland. In 1991 the Royal Irish Academy published a volume, based on selections of its own Beranger collection; the National Library's album (which describes itself as 'Volume I') includes some one hundred watercolours; all these reproduced in this lavish new volume.The watercolours are of Irish antiquities -- about one half of them copies of earlier drawings done by Beranger and no longer extant; the rest copies of originals (equally untraceable) by other artists, professional and amateur.Charming though these drawings are, their primary value is historical, as they provide us with an insight into the state of historical monuments in the eighteenth century and include the only visual record we have of many which have since disappeared without trace.

Hardcover

First published October 19, 1998