Michael Stapleton (1747-1801) was the most skilled stuccodor working in the neoclassical or ‘Adam’ style that dominated Dublin interior decoration in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Although the astonishing quality and variety of Dublin’s eighteenth-century decorative plasterwork has long been celebrated, this is the first time Stapleton’s drawings, preserved in the National Library, have been given an independent exhibition. Stapleton’s importance was first recognised in modern times by C.P. Curran in an seminal article in Studies (Sept. 1939), while the importance and value of the drawings collection was first addressed in an MA thesis at University College Dublin of 1985 by Eugenie Carr. This exhibition coincides with the publication by Churchill House Press of Conor Lucey’s new study of Stapleton’s work.