Biography

English painter, son of Thomas Malton (1726-1801), architectural draughtsman and writer on geometry, cabinet-maker and lecturer on perspective. He accompanied his father to Dublin, where he worked for architect James Gandon, despite a suspicion that the elder Malton had anonymously published severe criticism of Gandon's designs for the Royal Exchange in Dublin.

In the 1790s James Malton returned to London, where he supported himself as a topographical artist, exhibiting some fifty-one drawings, designs for, and elevations of buildings at the Royal Academy between 1792 and 1803. In 1797 he published a handsome volume of illustrations with text, A Descriptive View of Dublin. In the following year he published An Essay on British Cottage Architecture (which went into a second edition in 1804) and in 1802 A Collection of Designs for Rural Retreats. These two works of Malton's have aquatint illustrations of an exceptionally high quality and delicacy. Malton's importance as a pioneer of the cottage orné has been recognized.

James Malton died at his home in Norton Street on 28 July 1803 from brain fever and was buried in Marylebone churchyard. The contents of his studio and his effects were auctioned at Christies on 8 and 9 March 1804.