Antique Map of the Seine-Inferieure, Le Havre and Corneille, circa 1860

About this sheet

The department now called the Seine-Maritime, upper Normandy, with the mouth of the Seine cutting across the lower part of the sheet and Le Havre de Grace on its northern bank facing Honfleur. Saint-Valery, Dieppe, Longueville, Yvetot and Pont de l'Arche are named, with the chalk coast of the Pays de Caux running up to the north east. The sheet carries an engraved portrait of Pierre Corneille, born at Rouen, the founder of French classical tragedy. Normandy maps sell well to British and American buyers as well as French ones, and the Seine estuary with Le Havre is one of the most recognisable stretches of the French coast.

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 minor edge nick 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.