16 x 10 cm steelplate engraving, sheet size 23 x 15 cm. Hildesburghausen, circa 1849, Aus d. Kunstant. D. Bibl. Instit. in Hildbhn. Eigenthum d. Verleger.We are pleased to offer this exceptional original engraving featuring a view of architect John Haviland's Egyptian Revival New York City Jail known as "The Tombs" from Meyer's Universum, a popular series of books published in Germany from 1833 through the 1850s. Each edition featured "Views of the Most Remarkable Places and Objects of all Countries, in Steel Engravings by Distinguished Artists, with Descriptive and Historical Text, by Eminent Writers in Europe and America." The Universum series proved so successful that the founder Joseph Meyer (1796-1856) later dispatched his son Herrmann to New York to oversee publication of the series in an English language American edition. Every historic view selected for this series had to meet Meyer's exacting standard of quality, as is evident in this engraving which presents an interesting architectural study of a building Charles Dickens described in 1842 as a "dismal fronted pile of bastard Egyptian, like an enchanter's palace in a melodrama" with some vignettes of Manhattan street scenes.The amount of detail obtained through the medium of the steelplate engraving is remarkable - to get a sense of that detail consider that the building as seen in the enlarged view below stands just 3 cm tall actual size. The engraving, although uncredited in this edition, is in fact by the prolific Johann Gabriel Friedrich Poppel (1807-1882), also known as John Poppel. Described by Georg Kaspar Nagler in his Neues Allgemeines Künstler Lexicon of 1852 as "one of the finest engravers in both copper and steel" of his era Poppel was a brilliant architectural draughtsman as well, a skill put to fine use in this charming study.

Condition: good