Thomson’s Smaller Map of the East Indies & Australia
SKU: 8687Title:
Thomson’s Smaller Map of the East Indies & Australia
Date of publication:
c.1891
Printed Measurement:
32 x 25 cm
Colour:
original
Mapmaker(s):
Engraver(s):
Nathaniel Rogers Hewitt
East India Isles & Australia
Copper engraving, approx 32 x 25 cm, engraved by Nathaniel Hewitt after James Wyld senior, original hand-colour, vignette ‘view in New Zealand’, blank verso.
Wyld went on to establish his own highly successful firm of map publishers, which passed to his son when he died relatively young in 1836, apparently from 'overwork'. He introduced the new process of lithography to map printing, was a founder member of the Royal Geographical Society and was appointed Geographer to both George IV and William IV.
John Thomson had made his fortune through his extremely successful 'New General Atlas' , but in the 1820s he bankrupted himself, twice (in the process of creating his large-scale 'Atlas of Scotland' in a burst of patriotic pride) and he disappears from the historical record. Thomson's maps are characteristic of the Edinburgh school of cartography which flourished at the beginning of the nineteenth-century and is noted for its clarity and elegance; other exponents include John Cary and John Pinkerton.