Oceanie. French Antique map with Dumont D'Urville's Pacific Island group names. Levasseur, c1854.

by Levasseur, Victor

Australia with Oceania island groups named by D'Urville in 1831 with historic text. Victor Levasseur, c1854, with contemporary hand-colour (as published) but the price includes colouring.

Original antique map with the 1826-1829 voyage of French explorer Jules-Sebastien-Cesar Dumont d'Urville in Astrolabe, with D’Urville’s portrait on the right. (D'Urville's account of the voyage was published between 1832 and 1834.) Historical and geographical information at the base of the map (in French) refers to Australia or 'Nouvelle Hollande' (New Holland) as the fifth continent. The map shows D’Urville's names for the four Pacific island groups as Malaysia, Melanesia or Australia, Polynesia and Micronesia.

With a beautiful cartouche centre top below the title, and colour pen outlining of island groups, this is an original steel engraving by William Laguillermie from the drawings by Raimond Bonheur and geographer Victor Levasseur, published in Paris circa 1854 for Levasseur’s Atlas Universal Illustrée (Illustrated World Atlas). Levasseur flourished as a mapmaker between 1838 and 1856. This map is from a series of the most spectacular maps ever published. Each map was surrounded by intricately engraved historic commentary of the region.

Page size 366 x 510mm (32 x 14.5 inches).  The map has wide borders, but unfortunately our scanner is not large enough to show these. If you would like further images of edges, please email sales@antiqueprintclub.com