Philippe Vandermaelen
Saudi Arabia and Red Sea, 1827
18 x 21 in
46 x 53 cm
46 x 53 cm
MEAST3975
Asie - Partie de L’Arabie. No. 90 Early and detailed lithographic map of western Saudi Arabia and the adjacent Sudanese coast, divided by the Red Sea. The map marks...
Asie - Partie de L’Arabie. No. 90
Early and detailed lithographic map of western Saudi Arabia and the adjacent Sudanese coast, divided by the Red Sea. The map marks the major Arabian cities of Mecca, Jeddah and Taif and skillfully illustrates the Hejaz and Sarawat Mountain ranges.
In the Red Sea, the tracks of two vessels - Panther and Romney;
- The Panther appears to have been the boat that transported English explorer Nathaniel Pearce (1779-1820) across the Red Sea in late 1804 when he visited Mocha in Yemen and then west across the sea to Massawa in Eritrea (Africa). The Panther was one of the boats on George Annesley, Viscount Valentina's trip to India between 1802-1806, an account of which was published in 1809.
- The Romney was a British ship that, between 1798-1801, was in the Red Sea working to expel the French following Napoleon Bonaparte's Campaign in Egypt and Syria (part of the French Revolutionary Wars).
Philippe Vandermaelen
Philippe Vandermaelen was born in Brussels in 1795 and, at the age of 21, inherited a fortune from his father who had been a successful soap manufacturer. Financially independent, Vandermaelen was able to devote his life to the study of geography and in 1829 he founded a geographical institute in Brussels.
Vandermaelen's most important work, entitled "Atlas Universel", was an enormous atlas consisting of over 400 separate map sheets covering the world on the huge scale of 1:1,6 million. Each map sheet was designed using a special projection so that, if the owner of the maps so wished, they could all be joined together to form a globe with a diameter of 7.75 meters (This globe was actually built in Vandermaelen's institute in Brussels). The map sheets were printed using the process of lithography, which was an early use of this printing method for map making, and were then usually delicately hand coloured to emphasise boundaries and outlines. The complete atlas took only 3 years to make, a very short time for such a large project, and it was sold in instalments over a two year period from 1825.
Examples of Vandermaelen's map sheets are of great interest to the collector for a number of reasons. Firstly their large scale. The sections depict many of the remoter regions of the world on a scale previously unknown or unattainable. Particularly for the collector of Americana and Australasia, the sheets covering the western United States and Pacific respectively, where exploration was still in very early stages, are unique in this respect. Their historical insets, descriptions and statistics, along with their great visual clarity, make Vandermaelen's maps fascinating and valuable antique documents which also have superb visual appeal.
Original hand colour. [MEAST3975] (BC)
Early and detailed lithographic map of western Saudi Arabia and the adjacent Sudanese coast, divided by the Red Sea. The map marks the major Arabian cities of Mecca, Jeddah and Taif and skillfully illustrates the Hejaz and Sarawat Mountain ranges.
In the Red Sea, the tracks of two vessels - Panther and Romney;
- The Panther appears to have been the boat that transported English explorer Nathaniel Pearce (1779-1820) across the Red Sea in late 1804 when he visited Mocha in Yemen and then west across the sea to Massawa in Eritrea (Africa). The Panther was one of the boats on George Annesley, Viscount Valentina's trip to India between 1802-1806, an account of which was published in 1809.
- The Romney was a British ship that, between 1798-1801, was in the Red Sea working to expel the French following Napoleon Bonaparte's Campaign in Egypt and Syria (part of the French Revolutionary Wars).
Philippe Vandermaelen
Philippe Vandermaelen was born in Brussels in 1795 and, at the age of 21, inherited a fortune from his father who had been a successful soap manufacturer. Financially independent, Vandermaelen was able to devote his life to the study of geography and in 1829 he founded a geographical institute in Brussels.
Vandermaelen's most important work, entitled "Atlas Universel", was an enormous atlas consisting of over 400 separate map sheets covering the world on the huge scale of 1:1,6 million. Each map sheet was designed using a special projection so that, if the owner of the maps so wished, they could all be joined together to form a globe with a diameter of 7.75 meters (This globe was actually built in Vandermaelen's institute in Brussels). The map sheets were printed using the process of lithography, which was an early use of this printing method for map making, and were then usually delicately hand coloured to emphasise boundaries and outlines. The complete atlas took only 3 years to make, a very short time for such a large project, and it was sold in instalments over a two year period from 1825.
Examples of Vandermaelen's map sheets are of great interest to the collector for a number of reasons. Firstly their large scale. The sections depict many of the remoter regions of the world on a scale previously unknown or unattainable. Particularly for the collector of Americana and Australasia, the sheets covering the western United States and Pacific respectively, where exploration was still in very early stages, are unique in this respect. Their historical insets, descriptions and statistics, along with their great visual clarity, make Vandermaelen's maps fascinating and valuable antique documents which also have superb visual appeal.
Original hand colour. [MEAST3975] (BC)
