New York—The Thursday, December 7 sale of Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books at Swann Galleries is set to include a wide assortment of maps and graphics chronicling the advancement of knowledge of the world from the sixteenth through the twentieth century. Featured themes will be maps of the American continent from its early colonial settlement, the Revolutionary War. The period of growth and expansion in the West, all the way to some of the earliest established commercial airline flight paths in 1929.

            Color plate books lead the auction with John Gould’s A Monograph of the Ramphastidae, or Family of Toucans, bound together with Supplement to the First Edition, London, 1834 & 1855, at $40,000 to $60,000. Additional works include a set of four hand-colored aquatints illustrating events from Captain James Cook’s third voyage in the years 1776 to 1780 by James and John Cleveley ($8,000-12,000); and Frederick Sander’s Reichenbachia. Orchids Illustrated and Described, 192 chromolithographed plates after Henry George Moon and others, four volumes, 1888-94 ($5,000-7,000). Also of note are a colossal etched panorama detailing the spiraled relief carving of the ancient triumphal column of Marcus Aurelius, 1774-79, by Giovanni Battista Piranesi ($6,000-9,000); and John James Audubon’s Gannet. Plate CCCXXVI, hand-colored aquatint and engraved plate from Audubon’s Birds of America, 1836 ($4,000-6,000).

            Maps of America include two works by Pieter Goos with Paskaerte van Nova Granada en t’Eylandt California, a double-page engraved chart of California pleasantly designed and balanced with rhumb lines, scaled borders, and attractive car-ornamentation, Amsterdam, 1666 ($7,000-10,000); and Pas Caerte van Nieu Nederlandt en de Engelsche Virginies van Cabo Cod tot Cabo Cantrick, a double-page engraved chart of the middle-Atlantic American seaboard from the Chesapeake to Cape Cod, Amsterdam, 1666 ($4,000-6,000). Egbert Viele’s The Topography and Hydrology of New York, a 13-page pamphlet with a large folding hand-colored lithograph, New York, 1865 ($4,000-6,000); and Samuel Augustus Mitchell’s A New Map of Texas, Oregon and California with the Regions Adjoining, an engraved map of the American territories west of the Mississippi River, Philadelphia, 1846 ($3,500-5,000), also feature.

            Notable cartography that spans the globe includes two maps of Russia with Ivan Marchenkov’s Plan Stolichnago Goroda Moskyv (Plan of Moscow), a large, engraved map of Moscow with an imperial eagle title cartouche, Moscow, 1789 ($4,000-6,000), and Giacomo Gastaldi’s Descriptione de la Moscovia, a woodblock map of Russia with parts of Estonia, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine, Venice, 1550 ($4,000-6,000). Japan is represented by Zuda Rokashi’s Nansenbusgu Bankoku Shoka No Zo, a wall-sized woodblock map of the world, Kyoto, 1710 ($3,000-5,000), and a group of four large Edo-period panoramic maps of the roadways, waterways, cities, and topography of Japan’s chain of islands ($2,000-3,000). Central and South America, the Caribbean, France, and more are represented.

            Further highlights include a set of unassembled engraved gore segments that construct Vincenzo Coronelli’s enormous 42-inch terrestrial globe from 1688 ($18,000-22,000). Several unique manuscript maps will also be on offer, including a neatly detailed hand-drawn account of an extensive hike from New York City through New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania in the summers of 1860 and 1861 by a recent engineering graduate of the Brooklyn Collegiate Polytechnic Institute, only months before beginning his career as a Navy paymaster during the Civil War ($1,200-1,800). William Henry Cotton’s Carriers of the New Black Plague, 1938 ($3,000-4,000), and Rosalind Howe Sturges’s Philadelphia. 1682 – A Retrospective View of Wm. Penn’s “Great & Good Contrivance” Whose Architecture Reflects Three Centuries of Cultural Amity, 1966, 1970 ($3,000-5,000), represents pictorial maps.

Exhibition hours are 12 p.m to 5 p.m on Saturday, December 2, and Monday, December 4 through Wednesday, December 6. Bidding is available through online platforms, absentee, the phone, and live in-person. Live online bidding platforms will be the Swann Galleries App, Invaluable, and Live Auctioneers. The complete catalogue and bidding information will be available at www.swanngalleries.com and the Swann Galleries App a month prior to the sale.  

 

Captions: 

Lot 230: John Gould, A Monograph of the Ramphastidae, or Family of Toucans, bound with Supplement ot

the First Edition…, London, 1834, 1855. Estimate $40,000 to $60,000.

Lot 68: Vincenzo Coronelli, set of engraved gores for Coronelli’s monumental 42-inch terrestrial globe,

Venice, circa 1688-97. Estimate $18,000 to $22,000.

  

Auction date: Thursday, December 7

Specialist: Caleb Kiffer • caleb@swanngalleries.com • 212-254-4710 x 17 

  

Communications Manager: Kelsie Jankowski • kjankowski@swanngalleries.com • 212-254-4710 x 23 

CMO: Alexandra Nelson • alexandra@swanngalleries.com • 212-254-4710 x 19 

  

Social media: @swanngalleries   

 

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ADDL. IMAGES AVAILABLE ON REQUEST 

  

Swann Auction Galleries is a third-generation family business as well as the world’s largest auction house for works on paper. In the last 80 years, Swann has repeatedly revolutionized the trade with such innovations as the first U.S. auction dedicated to photographs and the world’s only department of African American Art. More than 40 auctions and previews are held annually in Swann Galleries’ two-floor exhibition space in Midtown Manhattan and online worldwide. Visit swanngalleries.com for more information.