The top lot at Swann Galleries’ December 6 auction of maps and atlases, natural history, historical prints and ephemera was Le Neptune François, ou Atlas Nouveau des Cartes Marines , bound with the second part, Cartes Marines à l’Usage des Armées du Roy de la Grande Bretagne , hand colored and with gilt highlights, first edition, Amsterdam, 1693, in contemporary binding. It brought an auction record price of $96,000.
One of the most celebrated French atlases, Neptune François was published jointly by Pieter Mortier of Amsterdam and Hubert Jaillot of Paris, with editions in Dutch, French and English, and was the most expensive sea atlas published in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century.
Another atlas that sold for a record price was Mount and Page’s The English Pilot, the Fourth Book describing the West-India Navigation, from Hudson’s Bay to the River Amazones , with 21 engraved map sheets, and four engraved maps in the text, London, 1780, $38,400.
Also among the featured atlases were Antonio Zatta’s Le Colonie Unite dell’ America Settentr.le , with 11 double-page engraved maps, Venice, 1778, $6,240, and Henry Schenck Tanner’s A New Universal Atlas, with 71 hand colored lithographed map sheets, Philadelphia, 1845, $3,840.
The sale also saw a record price for Herman Moll’s popular “A New and Exact Map of the Dominions of the King of Great Britain on ye Continent of North America,” London, 1715, known as the “beaver map” because of its vignette of the busy creatures, $28,800.
Other cartographic highlights were Abraham Ortelius’s “Islandia,” beautifully hand colored double-page engraved map, Antwerp, circa 1585, $10,200; G.H.V. Collot, “General Map of North America,” engraved folding map, Paris, 1826, $4,800; and a metal and wood American orrery, Saginaw, circa 1900, which far exceeded its presale estimate of $700․1,000 to bring $6,000.
A strong selection of books with decorative plates included Pieter Cramer’s work on insects Uitlandsche Kapllen †Papillons Exotique, with 162 hand colored plates, and volumes one and two of Aanhangsel †Supplement , with 32 hand colored plates, Amsterdam and Utrecht, 1779‹1, $4,800; Giuseppe Agostin Vasi’s Raccolta delle più belle Vedute Antiche, e Moderne di Roma , Rome 1786, $15,000; and Hippolyto Ruiz Lopez and Jose Pavo’s Flora Peruviana , four volumes with more than 360 engraved plates, Madrid, 1798‱801 and 1794, $11,400.
Among the individual decorative graphics offered was a scarce large-format chromolithographed print after Albert Bierstadt’s “The Domes of Yosemite,” Düsseldorf, 1870s, which sold for a record $30,000.
Prices reported include the buyer’s premium. For information, 212-254-4710 or www.swanngalleries.com .
