About this sheet
The department of the Tarn, in upper Languedoc, with Albi on the river and Castres to the south. Gaillac, Rabastens, Lavaur, Lautrec, Realmont, Villefranche, Valence and La Salvetat are named, with the Montagne Noire closing the southern edge and the vineyards of Gaillac along the Tarn. The sheet carries an engraved portrait of Jean-Francois de Galaup, comte de La Perouse, born at Albi in 1741, who sailed into the Pacific in 1785 and was never seen again after Botany Bay, a disappearance that occupied French naval expeditions for forty years. The La Perouse connection gives this department sheet an interest well beyond its own borders, particularly for buyers in Australia and the Pacific.
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, small binding holes along the left edge and faint soiling in 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.
