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DUVAL, Pierre (1618-1683)

[The Americas and the Western Hemisphere] L'Amerique Suivant les dernieres Relations avec les Routes que l'on tient pour Les Indes Occidentales

Paris: M[ademois]elle DuVal, dated 1679 [but 1688]. Copper-engraved wall map, with original outline colour, from Duval's "Carte de Geographie," on four unjoined sheets, expertly re-margined with laid paper on two sides of each sheet, compensating margins at the places where the maps were previously joined. Each sheet 19 1/8 x 23 5/8 inches, if joined the sheets would form a map measuring 34 x 45 inches.

A magnificent seventeenth century wall map of the Americas and the Western Hemisphere by one of the greatest French cartographers

This superb map of the New World evinces mid-seventeenth century French geographical knowledge, based largely upon the work of the great French cartographer, Nicolas Sanson, Duval's father-in-law. It is also an excellent example of the French cartographic aesthetic, exalting clarity and classical elegance. Duval, with some geographical modernizations, based this map on his smaller 1655 rendering of the same subject.

California is depicted as an island, as rendered by contemporary Dutch cartographers such as Frederick de Wit and Carel Allard. A speculative aspect also dominates the portrayal of the rest of the American Southwest, such as the labelling of the mythical land of "Quivira" on the mainland, and the depiction of the Rio Grande as having its source in the fictitious "Lac de Conibas," and its terminus in the Gulf of California.

The depiction of the American Northeast is somewhat more progressive than that shown by Sanson. New York, Boston, Cape Cod, Virginia and Maryland are each specifically named. Up into the interior, Duval shows all five Great Lakes, however the boundaries of Lakes Superior and Michigan ("Lac des Puans") are left undetermined.

Most of the American Southeast is shown as a part of the great Spanish territory of "Floride," which extends north into the Carolinas. South Carolina is labeled "Floride Françoise," and "Charles-Fort," the abortive French settlement on Port Royal Sound from the 1560s, is labeled here.

Interestingly, this map seems to have been a rhetorical device intended to promote the idea of a Northwest Passage that runs through the Canadian Arctic and then through a supposed strait into the Pacific Ocean. Duval makes the case clearly by stating that "It is believed that this strait communicates between the Seas of the North and the South". Supporting this notion, the map features the track of a supposed 1665 voyage that headed through the Davis and Hudson's Straits, and over through the "Mer Glaciale," heading towards "Iesso," a mythical land located to the north of Japan. The South Pacific and Australasia are shown to be largely a mystery to the European consciousness, with New Zealand being connected to the mythical "Terre de Quir."

The map is beautifully embellished with two Baroque cartouches including allegorical and native figures, and sailing ships. Each mapsheet is also adorned with side panels of text that explain political and geographical details of the regions featured. This map is the second state of Duval's map of the New World, printed under the privilege of his daughter, who was one of the inheritors of his firm upon his death in 1683. The imprint in the general title is altered to read "Chez Mlle. Du Val, Fille de l' Auteur Sur le Quay de l'Orloge, proche le coin de la rue de Harlay a l'ancien Buis."

Each of the four sheets is separately titled, as follows: [upper left] "Le Nouveau Mexique et La Terre de Jesso"; [lower left] "La Mer de Sud dit autrement Mer Pacifique"; [upper right] "La Mer de Nort ou sont La Nle. France, La Floride [&c.]"; [lower right] "Le Perou, Le Chili, La Magellanique, La Plata, et Le Bresil".

Burden, The Mapping of North America II, 508; McLaughlin, California as an Island, 66; Pastoureau, Les Atlas Francais XVIe-XVIIe siecles, Duval II-F, maps: 10,11,13,14 (State 2); Wagner, Cartography of the Northwest Coast of America, 414; Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West, 60.

#6774$14,500.00
 
 
GREENLEAF, Moses (1778-1834)

Map of the State of Maine with the Province of New Brunswick

[Portland]: 1844. Engraved wall map on four sheets by J. H. Young and F. Dankworth, hand-coloured. Relined. (A bit toned as usual, expert restoration at edges). Sheet size: 53 1/2 x 43 inches.

The best wall map of Maine at the time of its publication.

Greenleaf's initial goal was to promote settlement in the interior of Maine. Finding that the available maps were woeful, he set about compiling information for a detailed map of the entire region. The culmination of those efforts was this magnificent map. In the interior, settlements, towns, rivers and lakes are all carefully located. The map shows the entirety of the state, with the counties shaded in various colours. The extensive coastline is very nicely drawn, with many islands, points, and bays identified. Virtually all of New Brunswick is also included on the map, with the far eastern tip and Nova Scotia depicted in an inset. The northern part of the map shows the course of the St. Lawrence River. The scale is about eleven miles to the inch.

Moses Greenleaf has been given a great amount of credit for promoting Maine as an entity separate from Massachusetts, a task he began with his "Map of the District of Maine" in 1815, followed the next year by his first book. After Maine attained statehood in 1820, Greenleaf published a revised map and then began compiling the most up-to-date information for this great wall map, which was first published in 1829. The map was published by Shirley & Hyde of Portland, Maine (who also published Greenleaf's Survey of the State of Maine, with Accompanying Atlas, the same year) but the map was engraved in Philadelphia by Young and Dankworth. This third edition, with improvements, is dated January 1844.

Phillips Maps, pp.384; Ristow, pp.94-96 (for Greenleaf's cartography of Maine).

#23191$7,500.00
 
 
[NOLIN, Jean-Baptiste (1657-1725)] and Jean-Baptiste NOLIN II (1686-1672).

L'Amerique Dressée sur les Relations les plus Recentes rectifiées sur les dernieres observations

Paris: Chez l'Auteur Rue St. Jacques au dessus de la Rue des Mathurins a lensgne. de la Place des Victoires, 1740. Copper-engraved wall map, with original outline colour, composed from four joined sheets, surrounded by text and vignettes printed on separate sheets, backed onto old linen, with contemporary wooden rollers. Sheet size: 49 x 55 inches.

First state of a rare and monumental wall map of the Americas by a great French master of cartography.

Jean-Baptiste Nolin was one of the most accomplished and certainly the most ambitious French cartographer of his era. He founded what ultimately became a family empire in Paris in the 1680s. Exceptionally, he managed to marry superlative decorative ornamentation with the serious objective of producing maps that reflected the most advanced rendering of geographical detail. The artistic élan of his compositions evinced a style that preserved the rhetorical ambitions of the Baroque ethic, while anticipating the playful elegance of the Rococo period. His masterpieces, many like the present wall map, were monumental in scale and represented Nolin's desire to overwhelm his competition in what was a very challenging market. Highly controversial, Nolin occasionally described himself as "the Engraver to the King," an appointment of which the royal court was curiously never apprised. In his endeavour to include the very latest geographical details on his maps, he seldom hesitated to acquire information from his eminent contemporaries, most notably Guillaume De L'Isle and Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, Jean-Dominique Cassini and the Sieur de Tillemon. At times these rivals were not appreciative of Nolin's adoption of their intellectual property, and De L'Isle successfully sued Nolin for plagiarism in 1705. However, the larger-than-life Nolin always seemed to transcend these challenges, leaving a thriving enterprise to be taken up by his son.

The present map was created in 1740 by Jean-Baptiste Nolin II, largely based on earlier maps produced by his father. This work ambitiously endeavours to depict the Americas in the most up-to-date geographic form, generally borrowing from the most authoritative sources. Ironically, it was the senior Nolin's desire to acquire the most accurate information that caused him to propagate one of the eighteenth-century's greatest cartographic myths. By this time, South America had been quite thoroughly explored, however, the Pacific northwest and the adjacent interior areas of North America remained largely unseen by European eyes. The only prominent feature present in this terra incognita is the mythical Mer de l'Ouest, that sees the Pacific protrude dramatically into the continental landmass. The senior Nolin was the first cartographer to put this detail into print, his campaign of corporate espionage having uncovered a manuscript map by De L'Isle which depicted the sea. This incident was one of the key pieces of evidence that won De L'Isle's suit against Nolin. Although the Mer de l'Ouest is dramatically smaller here than in its original form (and is unlabelled in this map) it sustains a fascinating myth.

The map is an artistically virtuous composition on a monumental scale, the image being surrounded by thirty vignettes that depict the dramatic historical events that shaped the founding of the French and Spanish empires in the Americas. Each vignette is set within an elaborate baroque frame of a unique design, accompanied by descriptive text. The extensive text along the lower margin entitled "Description Géographique de l'Amérique" places this important map into its greater social and historical context. The map is further enhanced by a large decorative title cartouche, magnificently framed by period rocaille motifs, that depicts French Jesuits ministering to the Indians. A small vignette below the cartouche shows beavers at work, a popular motif on eighteenth-century maps of America

The map also features a decorative detail that represents a social commentary on contemporary European attitudes towards the indigenous peoples they encountered in the New World. The scene occupying the lower-left of the main image depicts Mars, the god of war, capriciously watching over two Europeans who are firing rifles onto a group of native Americans, who themselves are engaging in macabre acts of cannibalism.

This wall map is one of the greatest subjects of the Nolins' legacy, not only being a masterful work of art and a fascinating image that tests the very limits of European geographical knowledge, but a vivid record of a dramatic transitional period in the history of cartography, and of society in general.

Hale, The Discovery of the World Maps of the Earth and the Cosmos, p. 159

#10419$65,000.00
 
 
POPPLE, Henry (d. 1743) - Johannes COVENS (1697-1774) & Cornelius MORTIER (1697-1783), publishers

A Map of the British Empire in America with the French, Spanish and the Dutch Settlements adjacent thereto

Amsterdam: printed for John Covens and Cornelius Mortier, [n.d. c. 1742]. Copper-engraved map on four sheets, key map, sheet of harbor maps all hand-coloured in outline; 4 engraved views of Quebec, New York, Niagara Falls. Seven sheets, each 26 x 21 1/2 inches.

An important association copy of the Covens and Mortier edition of the famous Popple map, annotated by Peter Wraxall: a man intimately associated with the establishment and setting of boundaries in colonial America.

Henry Popple produced this map under the auspices of the Lord Commissioners of Trade and Plantations to help settle disputes arising from the rival expansions of English, Spanish and French colonies. "France claimed not only Canada, but also territories drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries - in practical terms, an area of half a continent" (Goss The Mapping of North America p.122.) The thrust of British mapmaking after 1718 was to establish her presence cartographically on the French. Hence the title "The British Empire in America..."Nevertheless, in making the map, Popple used the best available geographical information: Colonel Barnwell's map of the southeast; De L'Isle's "Carte de la Louisiane"; Cadwallader Colden's map of the Iroquois nations, and seems to have come up with a map that did not please imperialistic British viewers as much as it did those who only wanted an accurate depiction. The result was and is a vast map of North America never before delineated in such detail, and a source of delight and intrigue. The map was eventually very successful and there were several editions. Babinksi notes that George Washington owned a copy of the Key map (Popple's abbreviated version) and Benjamin Franklin ordered two copies for the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1746 and another in 1752. The Popple and Mitchell (1755) maps were the most important maps of North America made in the 18th century and were widely known and referred to throughout the formation of the United States.

This example is the second state of the edition published by Covens and Mortier in Amsterdam, circa 1742. Covens & Mortier was a highly respected Amsterdam map publishing firm, which, more than any of their colleagues, maintained the high standards established by the Dutch and French cartographers of the previous century. The seven page Popple map appeared in the Covens & Mortier edition of De l'Isle's Atlas Nouveau.

The Covens and Mortier version of Popple offers in a rather more manageable and accessible form all the geographical and political material of the original, including the depiction of Wager's sea battle with the Spanish near Cartagena in 1707. The region in question, the Eastern half of North America and a portion of northern South America, is laid out on four sheets, which joined would be roughly 43 x 52 inches. Each sheet is titled with its content. In addition to this are three more sheets: the Key map, a sheet with four views: Mexico City, New York, Quebec and Niagara Falls, and a sheet with eighteen harbor and island plans from Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia to Porto Bello in Panama. It is unusual to have the Key map, as it was frequently separated from the others and framed by itself.

This copy is further individualized in that it is the Wraxall-Dunkin-Van Rensslaer copy. It originally belonged to and was annotated by Peter Wraxall (d. 11 July 1759). He was an Englishman, who settled in New York and became involved in the relations between the Colony and the Iroquois Confederacy, which was a critical element in Britain's rivalry with France, writing several reports on the history of relations between whites and Iroquois in New York. Wraxall was William Johnson's secretary and, in battle, aide-de-camp, for the first two years of the French and Indian War. The atlas from which this map was removed subsequently passed to Elizabeth Dunkin (d.1846, niece of Wraxall's wife Elizabeth), who gave it to her son-in-law John Sanders Van Rensslaer (1792-1868).

Wraxall limits his annotations to the upper left sheet; he notes in the lower left corner of the margin that the so-called 'Lake Illinois' "in the Maps published by Jefferies 19th Feby. 1753 this Lake is named Mishigan & he runs the limits of the 6 Nations to the Branch of the Missisipi called in the above Map River Msingona". In addition he has added a sub-title (Native American name) to Lake Erie.

Mark Babinski Henry Popple's 1733 map (New Jersey, 1998) (ref); Cumming, The Southeast in Early Maps 249; E. McSherry Fowble Two Centuries of Prints in America 1680-1880 (1987), 6, 7; cf. John GossThe Mapping of North America (1990) 55 (key map only); Graff 3322; Howes P481, "b"; Lowery 338; McCorkle, et al. America Emergent 21; McCorkle, New England 741.3; Phillips Maps 569; Sabin 64140; Schwartz & Ehrenberg p.151; Streeter Sale 676; Stephenson & McKee Virginia in Maps, map II-18A-B; American National Biography.

#21060$35,000.00
 
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