Antique Map of French Senegal, Goree and the Fouta-Djallon, circa 1860

About this sheet

A map of the French establishments in Senegal, from the desert of the Moors in the north down the coast past Saint-Louis, Cap Vert and the island of Goree to the Rio Grande and the Bissagos archipelago, with the Gambia, the Casamance, the Fouta-Djallon highlands and the Mandingo countries drawn inland. The peoples of the region are lettered across their territories in the manner of the period. Goree is engraved as a vignette on the sheet. West African material of this date is comparatively scarce on the market because far fewer sheets were printed than for the French departments, and the island of Goree carries a weight of memory that makes this one of the more significant plates in the atlas.

La France, Nouvel Atlas Illustre des Departements et des Colonies was drawn by Alexandre Vuillemin, ingenieur geographe, and published in Paris by Migeon at 9 rue de la Vieille Monnaie. Vuillemin built each sheet from the official surveys, the Cassini maps, the Depot de la Guerre, the Ponts et Chaussees and the charts of the Marine, and then framed the map with engraved vignettes: a portrait of a figure born in the department, a view of a monument or a ruin, a coat of arms. The result is part atlas and part popular encyclopaedia, and it remains one of the most decorative French departmental series of the nineteenth century.

The plates in this copy show France divided into eighty six departments and the county of Nice still outside the frontier, so the engraving was completed before the annexation of Savoy and Nice in 1860, although Migeon went on issuing the atlas for many years afterwards. The sheets suit a French interior particularly well, and a group of neighbouring departments hung together makes an attractive run.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning and scattered foxing and a small spot confined to the margins; the image itself is clean.

This is an original antique map, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.