Stephen O'Driscoll, Lithographer and Caricaturist
(b. about 1825, d. 1895)
Lithographer and Caricaturist
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
He worked in Pembroke Street, Cork, as a lithographer, and also did caricature portraits and silhouettes which found a ready sale in the print-shops. His silhouettes were cut in black paper and often touched up with gold or paint, the back-grounds put in with Indian ink. They are clever specimens of the art. He produced a number of portraits and caricatures of the prominent inhabitants of Cork, from magistrates and town councillors to beggarmen; and he designed and lithographed the address, printed on satin, presented to Queen Victoria on the occasion of her visit to Cork, as well as the admission card to the ceremony. His daughter, Mary, helped him in his work in his later years, and their signatures, M. & S. O'Driscoll, 1870, appear on the large picture in the Cork Museum, "Assembly of Citizens in front of Commercial Buildings, South Mall." In this there are some hundreds of figures, each of them a silhouette cut out and pasted on and touched with colour, a clever performance of its kind. A similar group is at Queenstown, an "Assembly in front of the Queen's Hotel." In the Cork Museum is also a silhouette group of "Father Mathew, Dan Callaghan, M.P., and the King of the Cork Beggars," dated 1843. In the Franks' Collection in the British Museum is a book-plate of "Rev. James O'Regan," signed O'Driscoll, Lithog. O'Driscoll died on 20th February, 1895, aged 70 years.