Thomas Bell, Painter
(fl. 1809-1829)
Painter
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
Appears to have been born about 1780. He exhibited portraits and landscapes in Dublin from 1809 to 1821. In 1829 he published an "Essay on the Origin and Progress of Gothic Architecture in Ireland," illustrated with lithographs by the author and by T. J. Mulvany, which was awarded the prize by the Royal Dublin Society for the best essay on the subject. He presented to the Royal Hibernian Academy a set of catalogues of all the exhibitions of the Societies of Artists held before the establishment of the Academy. This is, as far as known, the only complete set of these early catalogues. Bound with them is a MS. history of the societies, and the whole forms an invaluable record of art and artists in Ireland during the latter half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.