James Gandon

James Gandon ( born February 20, 1742 in London, † December 24, 1823 in Lucan in Dublin) was a British architect and engraver. Gandon is considered the leading architect in Dublin at the time of classicism and coined with its monumental public buildings influences the appearance of the city.

Life and work

Training and time in London (1742-1781)

James Gandon was born in London as a descendant of Huguenot refugees. From 1757 he was educated at Sir William Chambers, and was self-employed since 1765 in England worked. In the newly founded Royal Academy of Arts, he attended architecture courses, and won one of the first competitions there. Due to the difficult situation in London, he first tried to become known through publications and published along with John Woolfe two supplementary volumes (1767 and 1771) of Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Tafelwerk Campbell. The plant also Gandon designs for the Shire Hall are located in Nottingham.

First connections to Ireland arose in 1768 when he won the second prize for the design of the Dublin Stock Exchange. In 1772 it came to the birth of his son James Gandon junior, who himself worked as an architect and in 1846 brought out a first biography of his father. Gandon in 1775 studied the works of Charles -Louis Clérisseau and copied some of his drawings. At the same time he dealt with Kupferstecherei and produced five sheets of drawings by Richard Wilson, the show ancient buildings such as the Baths of Diocletian. 1776, he won another architectural prize for the design of the St. Luke Hospital in London.

Moved to Ireland (1781-1823)

Important for his later moved to Dublin in 1781 were his acquaintances to John Dawson, 1st Earl of Portarlington, who invited him to Ireland, and John Beresford. Beresford was 1780, the design of the Dublin Custom House in order and helped him later as promoters, principals and influential politicians. An invitation from Catherine II to Saint Petersburg refused to Gandon and decided finally in 1781 for Dublin.

There he drew up in 1791, the Custom House ( Custom House ) together with docks and quays, which is greatly influenced by the Roman architecture of his teacher, Sir William Chambers. The success of the building brought him before the completion of the contract for the expansion of the parliament building (1784-1789), which he had equipped with a Corinthian portico. 1786 the completion of the Four Courts he was given ( courts) that were started in 1770 by Thomas Cooley for the Irish National Archives and remained unfinished after his death in 1784. Gandon integrated Cooley's work into their own plans, and completed the building in the required new function and enlarged form completed.

During the political turmoil of 1798/1799 Gandon fled to London for a short time, but remained active for the rest of his life in Dublin, where he had artistically finally established. From 1799 he designed the King's Inns, whose completion he could not finish due to health problems. Consequently, he handed over the project in 1805 to his pupils Henry Aaron Baker and Francis Johnston and retired to his country estate Canon Brook in Lucan in Dublin.

Own writings

• James Gandon, John Woolfe: Vitruvius Britannicus ( supplementary volumes ), London 1767th