A Compendium of Irish Biography/Beranger, Gabriel
Beranger, Gabriel, an artist descended of Huguenot parents, was born in Rotterdam, and in 1750, when about twenty-one years old, came to Ireland. He kept an artist's warehouse at 5, South Great George's-street, Dublin, from 1766 to 1779. His business did not succeed, and General Vallancey procured him a situation in the Exchequer Office. In his old age a fortune was bequeathed him by a relative. He died 18th February 1817. He left some interesting itineraries about the neighbourhood of Dublin, and his antiquarian sketches have preserved the appearance of many buildings now no longer standing, notably the round tower of St. Michael le Pole, in Ship-street, Dublin, demolished in 1799. Sir William Wilde states that Beranger was a flower painter of much taste. [1]
Beranger, Gabriel, (page 16).— The fullest available particulars relating to Beranger will be found (chiefly from the pen of Sir William Wilde, who contemplated writing a memoir of him) in the Journal of the Historical and Archæological Association of Ireland, for January and July 1870, July 1873, and October 1876. Interesting notes of his travels in different parts of the country are given. His account of a tour in the County of Wexford in the autumn of 1770 is full of valuable information as to the condition of the people. Many of the sketches in Grose's Antiquities are by Beranger; and some hundreds of his drawings are preserved in the Royal Irish Academy, and by Lady Wilde. The information he collected in regard to the manners and language of the Barony of Forth is embodied in Vallancey's Collectanea. There is very little reference in Beranger's notes to the exciting political events of the time in which he lived. He was aged 89 at his death, in February 1817, and was buried in the French burial-ground, in Dublin. [1]
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