New Light on John Rocque: His Career as Artist-Engraver and His Two Great City Maps of London (1746) and Dublin (1756)

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the context of the sparse documentary evidence for the important mid-eighteenth-century mapmaker John Rocque, this article looks to examine the nature and development of the Huguenot’s professional career through a closer consideration of a broader sampling of his output than has previously been the case. This entails an acknowledgement of the importance of his work as a decorative and topographical engraver, which predates his more famous city and county maps, as well as a sustained consideration of his last great original city plan, An Exact Survey of Dublin. This was Rocque’s only house-by-house city map, one over which he had full control and that is more representative of his map making than the 24-sheet London map for which he is generally more famous. Rocque’s move from estate surveyor to city mapmaker is considered in the light of the previously only partly explored input into the surveying methodology of the London map by the Royal Society’s secretary Peter Davall. Attention is also drawn to two previously unpublished letters by Rocque to his nephew in Mannheim, written the year before Rocque went to Dublin in 1754, and which point to Rocque’s expectations of his own demise.