Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Dominican priest and amateur architect. Thomas O'Brien had two prolonged sojourns in Italy, from 1770 to 1778 and from 1786 to 1798. In 1787, when he was living in Cremona, he submitted a design for a bishop's palace in an architectural competition held by the Academy of Parma, and in 1789 he entered a design for a public granary in another competition held by the same body. Neither attempt was successful. In 1798 he was elected to the Accademia del Disegno in Florence. He had returned to Dublin by 1799, when he was appointed prior of the Dominican foundation at Athy, Co. Kildare.



References

All information in this entry is from the entry on O'Brien in John Ingamells, ed., A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800 (1997), 719.