Search Results: Benelux from Bryars and Bryars

Cologne, c. 1581. Copper engraving, 35.5 x 44 cms, fine original hand colour, some colour offsetting, German text to verso. Plan of Namur in Belgium. The Civitates Orbis Terrarum was one of the most significant cartographic works of the late sixteenth-century, printed over 45 year period between 1572 and 1617. It was the first systematic city atlas (containing the first accurate surveys of many towns) and was inspired in part by the scope of Abraham Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terarrum which gathered together the best available geographical information. Town views and plans were all taken from direct observation rather than improvised in the manner of some earlier geographical works - it was not unknown for the same view to appear in more than one guise. Georg Braun wrote the text and Ortelius himself - who travelled through Italy with the artist Joris Hoefnagel - supplied a significant proportion of the material, which was then engraved by Simon Novellanus and Frans Hogenburg. Later contributors… Read More

London, 1804. Copper engraving, 52 x 62 cms, original hand colour, blank verso. The former Austrian Netherlands, parts of the Rhineland and southern Holland were occupied by the armies of the First French Republic in 1794 and remained part of the French Empire until 1813. Map

Amsterdam, c. 1730. Copper engraving, 59.5 x 51.5 cm, original hand colour, uncoloured allegorical cartouche surmounted by a Dutch lion bearing a sword and phrygian cap, one or two marginal nicks and tears, blank verso. Our map shows the original Seventeen Provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands, control of which, as the title explains, had by this time been divided between the Dutch Republic, Austria, Prussia, and France. The map is correct according to the most recent ‘tractaat van Barriere’ or Barrièretraktaat; a series of ‘Barrier Treatries’ (mostly 1709-1715) allowed the Dutch to station troops in the Austrian Netherlands, partly paid for by the local inhabitants, as a first line of defence against the French. Map

Paris, 1683. Copper engraving, 14.5 x 10.5 cms, recent hand-colour, French text on verso, from Mallet’s ‘Description de l’Univers’. Map

Paris: Claude Gournay, 1708. Copper engraving, 40.5 x 63 cms, black and white, blank verso. Gournay also produced a plan which showed Louis XIV’s successful siege of Namur in 1692, but our map shows the 1695 siege and recapture of Namur by the Allies. The second siege was a turning point in the Nine Years’ War, the precursor to the War of the Spanish Succession, which was still raging when our map was made. Gournay depicts the elaborate new fortifications built by the French (‘marked with the letter A’), but in spite of them Namur fell to British, Dutch and Habsburg forces after two months. Sterne’s Uncle Toby, one of the central figures in Tristram Shandy, was wounded in the groin at Namur. He owns his own plan of the siege, pasted to a board, and he re-enacts it on model fortifications in the grounds of Shandy Hall. The Widow Wadman is anxious to ascertain the precise nature of Toby’s injuries, but when asked where he was wounded he will only show her on the map. Map

Paris, 1683. Copper engraving, 15 x 10 cms, recent hand-colour, French text on verso, from Mallet’s ‘Description de l’Univers’. Map

Amsterdam, c. 1700. Copper engraving, 50.5 x 59 cm, original hand-colour, very slight paper toning, blank verso. The map extends as far south as Paris, but the focus is on the region which is now mostly incoprorated into Belgium and Luxembourg, but was then divided between France, Spain and the United Provinces. The elaborate allegorical cartouche features a Belgian lion. Map

London, 1821. Copper engraving, 47 x 30 cms, original hand-colour, blank verso; prepared for Playfair’s ‘New General Atlas’. Map

Cologne, c. 1581. Copper engraving, 34 x 42 cms, original hand colour, vertical printer’s crease to left of centrefold, German text to verso. Plan of Tienen in Flanders, Belgium. Map

Amsterdam, Jodocus Hondius, 1616. Copper engraving, 9.5 x 13.4 cms, recent hand-colour, Latin text on verso. Map

Amsterdam, Jodocus Hondius, 1616. Copper engraving, 9.5 x 13.4 cms, recent hand-colour, slightly weak impression affecting right-hand neatline, Latin text on verso. Map

London, 1831. Copper engraving, 27.5 x 22 cms, original hand-colour in outline, blank verso. From ‘A Modern and Ancient General Atlas, comprehending all the Empires, Kingdoms, States in the World’. Lizars trained as a painter, but in 1812 took over the Edinburgh publishing and engraving business established by his father. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands was created at the end of the Napoleonic Wars; Belgium became independent in 1830. Map

Amsterdam, Jodocus Hondius, 1616. Copper engraving, 9.5 x 13.4 cms, recent hand-colour, Latin text on verso. The modern Aisne, named here for the Viromandui, a Belgic tribal name. Map

London, 1748. Copper engraving, 18.5 x 40 cms, recent hand-colour, blank verso. Legend at foot names and locates the principal “publick buildings and fortifications”; prepared for the June 1748 issue of the “Gentleman’s Magazine”. Map

London: Publish'd 7th June, 1794 by J Barber, No 9, Sweeting's-Alley, Royal-Exchange.. , 1794. Broadsheet map, sheet size 54.5 x 43 cms; map 40.5 x 27 cms, within frame 44 x 39 cms. The frame, and the symbols for towns and cities are printed from a woodblock; placenames, the title and the text in the side-panels is letterpess; the coastline, rivers and the political border between Austrian and French territory have been inked in by hand. Laid on linen, very light staining and some wear at the folds, ‘Brigton’ in a contemporary hand on the cover. The inclusion of Paris as the Allied objective proved somewhat premature. The Revolutionary French armies swept the Austrians and British back accross the Rhine and as far north as Hanover. Austria lost control of the Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium), and the Dutch Republic was toppled in favour of the Batvian Republic, a French client state. This unusual broadsheet map is recorded in states dated 29 May, 7 June, 23 June and 2 July 1794. Map