Antique Map of the Creuse, Gueret and Felletin, Vuillemin, circa 1860

About this sheet

The department of the Creuse, in the old province of the Marche on the northern edge of the Limousin. The map carries Gueret, the chef-lieu, with Aigurande, Chambon, Grand-Bourg, Saint-Sulpice, Felletin, La Courtine and Bonnat, the river Creuse running north across the sheet and the granite uplands shown in fine hachure. This is the tapestry country, poor farming land whose people left every spring as masons and came back in the autumn, a pattern of seasonal migration that the department was famous for throughout the nineteenth century. Engraved vignettes and a decorative border frame the map in the manner of the series. A sheet with a strong local following and an obvious buyer in anyone with a connection to the Creuse.

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, a few small spots and a faint soft crease 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.