The Stapleton Collection – Designs for the Irish Neoclassical Interior
Conor Lucey
Churchill House Press, Tralee, 2007
pp 352 ills 326 col 282 b/w 44 h/b
€45.00 ISBN 978-0-9550246-2-7
Dr Joseph McDonnell
'The first picture that comes to my mind, whenever I'm seized with a longing for London, is that of the quiet perspectives of Bloomsbury ... But henceforth another picture, even more attractive, will be superimposed upon this one in my mind. It is that of the Georgian quarters of Dublin ... staircases and ceilings adorned with white rococo plasterwork and with classical plasterwork in soft colours, white or pale green or light tawny brown... Venetian plasterwork, Pompeian plasterwork, the tombs of via Latina, the palace of Split: the Mediterranean world shines out even here.'
Conor Lucey opens his absorbing book on the Dublin neoclassical stuccodore and builder, Michael Stapleton (1747 – 1801), with the above quotation from Mario Praz, author of The Romantic Agony, who visited Ireland in the 1930s. Back in 1785, the German traveller Karl Gottfied Kuttner was similarly delighted and astonished at finding all'antica decoration all the rage in Dublin houses.
The all'antica or neoclassical style of interior decoration, which emerged in Great Britain from the late 1750s onwards, was in great measure the creation of Robert Adam. By the 1770s the Adamesque style was challenged by the younger architect James Wyatt, fresh from the Grand Tour, whose more refined linear style of decoration was much admired. His influence was especially felt in Ireland due to his Irish agent Thomas Penrose who had a working relationship with Michael Stapleton.
It was C P Curran, the friend of James Joyce, who first brought Michael Stapleton to prominence in articles published in 1939Ð40. Curran's recent discovery of a large collection of drawings, mostly of architectural interiors, now in the National Library of Ireland, from a descendent of Michael Stapleton led him to believe that the majority were executed by the stuccodore. It was particularly gratifying for Curran to discover in the collection two ceiling designs for Belvedere College (formerly Belvedere House), his and Joyce's old school, which apparently identified Stapleton as the stuccodore and not a continental decorator as was generally believed at the time.
Belvedere College, as well as its Joycean association, now became the celebrated showpiece of neoclassical decoration in Dublin, thanks to Curran and the ringing denunciation of the Jesuits by Mario Praz over the apparent 19th-century removal of a ceiling centrepiece of the naked Venus: 'when at Belvedere House they show you the Hall of Venus, from the ceiling of which, the goddess has been obliterated by the hammer blows through the zeal of the Jesuits.'
Drawing on Curran's discoveries, and the exemplary, if unpublished, catalogue of the Stapleton collection by Eugenie Carr, Conor Lucey has added significantly to our knowledge of Stapleton and his practice. Particularly valuable are his chapters on the decorative plastering trade, bringing to light long forgotten stuccodores, and the processes of decorating the interior at the end of the 18th-century in Ireland. Two further chapters discuss Michael Stapleton's major decorative schemes and critically examine the canon of established work, as well as his house building practice, while the final chapter explores the career of his son George Stapleton.
Among the fully illustrated catalogue of mostly neoclassical designs is a striking rococo stray drawing for a ceiling with emblematic figures which may have been in the possession of Robert West, the stuccodore and master builder, who bequeathed his collection to Stapleton. Curran identified the principal figures in his Dublin Decorative Plasterwork, (p.82) as Fame and Pegasus. The drawing however is almost certainly by a continental artist and should be compared to a somewhat similar design for a rococo ceiling, signed by the Milanese architect, Placido Colombani (1744Ð1801?), and illustrated in Margaret Jourdain's English Decorative Plasterwork (p.166).
This exciting and important book is a most welcome addition to the literature on Irish art and architecture.
Dr Joseph McDonnell is the author of Irish Eighteenth-century Stuccowork and its European Sources (1991)..
'The first picture that comes to my mind, whenever I'm seized with a longing for London, is that of the quiet perspectives of Bloomsbury ... But henceforth another picture, even more attractive, will be superimposed upon this one in my mind. It is that of the Georgian quarters of Dublin ... staircases and ceilings adorned with white rococo plasterwork and with classical plasterwork in soft colours, white or pale green or light tawny brown... Venetian plasterwork, Pompeian plasterwork, the tombs of via Latina, the palace of Split: the Mediterranean world shines out even here.'Conor Lucey opens his absorbing book on the Dublin neoclassical stuccodore and builder, Michael Stapleton (1747 – 1801), with the above quotation from Mario Praz, author of The Romantic Agony, who visited Ireland in the 1930s. Back in 1785, the German traveller Karl Gottfied Kuttner was similarly delighted and astonished at finding all'antica decoration all the rage in Dublin houses.
The all'antica or neoclassical style of interior decoration, which emerged in Great Britain from the late 1750s onwards, was in great measure the creation of Robert Adam. By the 1770s the Adamesque style was challenged by the younger architect James Wyatt, fresh from the Grand Tour, whose more refined linear style of decoration was much admired. His influence was especially felt in Ireland due to his Irish agent Thomas Penrose who had a working relationship with Michael Stapleton.
It was C P Curran, the friend of James Joyce, who first brought Michael Stapleton to prominence in articles published in 1939Ð40. Curran's recent discovery of a large collection of drawings, mostly of architectural interiors, now in the National Library of Ireland, from a descendent of Michael Stapleton led him to believe that the majority were executed by the stuccodore. It was particularly gratifying for Curran to discover in the collection two ceiling designs for Belvedere College (formerly Belvedere House), his and Joyce's old school, which apparently identified Stapleton as the stuccodore and not a continental decorator as was generally believed at the time.
Belvedere College, as well as its Joycean association, now became the celebrated showpiece of neoclassical decoration in Dublin, thanks to Curran and the ringing denunciation of the Jesuits by Mario Praz over the apparent 19th-century removal of a ceiling centrepiece of the naked Venus: 'when at Belvedere House they show you the Hall of Venus, from the ceiling of which, the goddess has been obliterated by the hammer blows through the zeal of the Jesuits.'
Drawing on Curran's discoveries, and the exemplary, if unpublished, catalogue of the Stapleton collection by Eugenie Carr, Conor Lucey has added significantly to our knowledge of Stapleton and his practice. Particularly valuable are his chapters on the decorative plastering trade, bringing to light long forgotten stuccodores, and the processes of decorating the interior at the end of the 18th-century in Ireland. Two further chapters discuss Michael Stapleton's major decorative schemes and critically examine the canon of established work, as well as his house building practice, while the final chapter explores the career of his son George Stapleton.
Among the fully illustrated catalogue of mostly neoclassical designs is a striking rococo stray drawing for a ceiling with emblematic figures which may have been in the possession of Robert West, the stuccodore and master builder, who bequeathed his collection to Stapleton. Curran identified the principal figures in his Dublin Decorative Plasterwork, (p.82) as Fame and Pegasus. The drawing however is almost certainly by a continental artist and should be compared to a somewhat similar design for a rococo ceiling, signed by the Milanese architect, Placido Colombani (1744Ð1801?), and illustrated in Margaret Jourdain's English Decorative Plasterwork (p.166).
This exciting and important book is a most welcome addition to the literature on Irish art and architecture.
Dr Joseph McDonnell is the author of Irish Eighteenth-century Stuccowork and its European Sources (1991)..