Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Stuccadore, master builder and merchant, of Dublin. Robert West was active in Dublin from the 1750s until the 1780s. Robert West's origins are unknown.  His career spans almost forty years from 1752, when he was admitted a freeman of the city as a member of the Plasterers' Guild by Grace Especial,(1) until his death in 1790. West is associated with one of the most spectacular pieces of stuccowork in Ireland, the hall of the house which he built as a speculation at No. 20 Lower Dominick Street. The style of the plasterwork in this building is so dissimilar from the work for which West was paid at the Rotunda Hospital and at No. 9 Cavendish Row, that McDonnell has proposed that it was different employees of West's rather than West himself who were variously responsible.(2) Between 1757 and 1770 West acquired plots of land in Dominick Street and Granby Row and erected houses on them. He owned an 'orchard field' behind old St George's church and held nineteen acres in Streamstown, Co. Dublin(3) and a further twenty-seven acres with quarries at Donnycarney. In his will of 27 July 1789, which was proved on 2 September 1790, he named his friend MICHAEL STAPLETON MICHAEL STAPLETON , who was also both a stuccadore and a builder, as a legatee and sole executor. His residuary estate was left to his niece Catherine Gaven and his nephew Robert, son of his brother John West.

'Mr West' was a subscriber to George Richardson's Book of Ceilings (1776).(4)

Addresses: Lime Street, 1765; Moore Street, 1770; Lower Abbey Street, 1772.

See WORKS.



References

All information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from C.P. Curran, Dublin Decorative Plasterwork of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries(1967), 59-65,106.

(1) The fact that both he and his brother John West were admitted freemen by 'Grace Especial' may indicate that they came from elsewhere.
(2) Joseph McDonnell, Irish Eighteenth-century stuccowork and its European sources (National Gallery of Ireland, 1991), 9,21.
(3) Curran suggests that they would have provided him with a source of sand.
(4) IAA, Edward McParland files, Acc. 2008/44.


10 work entries listed in chronological order for WEST, ROBERT *


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Building: ENGLAND, WHITEHAVEN (CUMBERLAND), ST JAMES'S CHURCH
Date: 1753
Nature: A 'Robert West' paid £23.17s.4d 'in full for his bill for the middle ceiling with the cornice and ornaments', 30 Jun 1853.  O'Dwyer believes him to be RW of Dublin.
Refs: Frederick O'Dwyer, 'Robert West, Chirstopher Myers and St James's church, Whitehaven', Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies 12 (2009),18-19 (illus.).

Building: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, PARNELL SQUARE, NO. 004
Date: 1755p
Nature: Plasterwork in front room of ground floor 'has been attributed to Robert West' (Casey).
Refs: Christine Casey, The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin (2005), 223.

Building: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, PARNELL STREET, ROTUNDA HOSPITAL
Date: 1756a
Nature: RW paid £534.8s.8 1/2d for cornices and plastering, 1 Dec 1756 and £460.1s.2 1/2d, for plaster and stucco, 6 Dec 1756. Work 'presumably included the ornamental work on the staircase ceiling and walls; as well as the soffits of the gallery in the Chapel' (McDonnell). Casey also gives ceiling of entrance hall RW.
Refs: C.P. Curran, The Rotunda Hospital: its architects and craftsmen (1945), 23; C.P. Curran, Dublin Decorative Plasterwork of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries(1967), 51-56, Pls. 72-81; Joseph McDonnell, Irish eighteenth-century stuccowork and its European sources (National Gallery of Ireland, 1991), 21,24-25, Pls.132,133;  Christine Casey, The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin (2005), 163.

Building: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, DOMINICK STREET LOWER, NO. 020
Date: 1757p
Nature: Built as a speculative venture and sold to Hon. Robert Marshall in 1758. Plasterwork by an Irish stuccodore, not necessarily by West himself.
Refs: C.P. Curran, Dublin Decorative Plasterwork of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries(1967), 60-62; Joseph McDonnell, Irish eighteenth-century stuccowork and its European sources (National Gallery of Ireland, 1991), 13,21;  Christine Casey, The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin (2005), 187-189.
 

Building: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, CAVENDISH ROW, NO. 009
Date: 1758a
Nature: First-floor ceilings, for Dr Bartolomew Mosse.; 'probably by the same hand as the staircase ceiling and gallery soffits of the Chapel in the Rotunda Hospital' (McDonnell). RW paid final instalment for same in 1758.
Refs: C.P. Curran, Dublin Decorative Plasterwork of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries(1967), 59-60, Pl.98; Joseph McDonnell, Irish eighteenth-century stuccowork and its European sources (National Gallery of Ireland, 1991), 27

Building: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, ST STEPHEN'S GREEN, NO. 056
Date: 1760ca
Nature: '..there are links between the plasterwork of No. 56 and that of West' house [at No. 20 Dominick St]' (Casey).
Refs: Christine Casey, The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin (2005), 543.

Building: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, DENMARK ST GREAT, BELVEDERE HOUSE
Date: 1765
Nature: Design of house attributed to West by Casey.  Incomplete house offered for sale, 1777, and subsequently completed by Michael Stapleton or West and Stapleton. Venus Room ceiling attr. to West by Lucey. House similar in plan and compositon to 86 St Stephen's Green, which is also attr. to West.
Refs: Christine Casey, The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin (2005), 174,175;  Conor Lucey, The Stapleton collection: designs for the Irish neoclassical interior (Tralee: Churchill House Press, 2007), 43-44,108, Pl.42;  information from Willie Cuuming, National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, Oct 2011.

Building: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, ST STEPHEN'S GREEN, NO. 086
Date: 1766
Nature: Attribution of decoration to RW by Curran & Craig 'without any firm evidence' (McDonnell);  ceilingsappear to have been executed by a number of hands' (Casey).
Refs: M. Craig, Dublin 1660-1860 (1952), 221; C.P. Curran, Dublin Decorative Plasterwork of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1967), 63-64; Joseph McDonnell, Irish eighteenth-century stuccowork and its European sources (National Gallery of Ireland, 1991), 27;  Christine Casey, The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin (2005), 507-8.

Building: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, PARNELL SQUARE, NO. 029
Date: 1770
Nature: House completed by RW in 1770.
Refs: Christine Casey, The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin (2005), 228.

Building: CO. WEXFORD?, BUNCLODY?, GLEBE HOUSE
Date: 1784
Nature: Plan and estimate for 'Mr Mason's Glebe House; signed 'pr. R. West Feb 27th 1784'
Refs: Among papers relating to Newtown Barry, Co. Wexford, from Farnham Collection, sold at auction in Dublin, 17 Jun 2004 (Lot 276)