About this sheet
An antique map of the department of the Vosges, in the old province of Lorraine, drawn by Alexandre Vuillemin and published in Paris by Migeon around 1860. The map carries Epinal, the chef-lieu on the Moselle, with Saint-Die, Remiremont, Mirecourt and Neufchateau, the wooded ridges and rounded summits of the Vosges mountains filling the eastern side of the department and the headwaters of the Moselle and the Meuse rising within it. Epinal is famous well beyond France for its printed images, the brightly coloured popular prints made there from the end of the eighteenth century whose name became a byword for a simple and cheerful picture, so the department has a particular interest for anyone who collects printed material. A map of this date also shows the Vosges before the frontier of 1871, when the loss of Alsace made the crest of the mountains the boundary of the German Empire. The sheet is a steel engraving with original hand colour, in the decorative departmental format described below, and it suits a mountain house or a study as readily as a French interior.
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 faint soiling 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.
