Le Neptune François, ou atlas nouveau des cartes marines. Levées et gravées par ordre exprés dur Roy. Pour l'usage de ses armées de Mer. Dans lequeul on voit la description exacte de toutes les Côtes de la Mer Oceane, & de la Mer Baltique depuis la Norwege jusques au Detroit de Gibraltar. Où sont exactement marquées les routes qu'il faut tenir, les Bancs de sables, Rochers & Brasses d'eau; & generalement tout ce qui concerne la Navigation. Le tout fait sur les observations & l'experience des plus habiles Ingenieurs & Pilotes. Reveu & mis en ordre par les Sieurs Pene, Cassini & autres BOUND WITH Cartes Marines a l'usage des armées du roy de la Grande Bretagne. Faites sur les Memoires les plus nouveaux, des plus experts Ingenieurs & Pilotes, & enrichies des profils des plus fameux Ports de Mer & villes Maritimes de l'Europe. . .
THE WARDINGTON COPY
FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE ARCHITECT JAMES GIBBS
Neptune: Paris: Hubert Jaillot, 1693 [but Amsterdam: Pieter Mortier, 1693]. First issue of the Amsterdam edition.
Cartes Marines: Amsterdam: Pieter Mortier, 1693.
Broadsheet (25” x 19 3/4”, 634mm x 503mm).
Neptune: π1 A-C1 [$1 signed]. 4 leaves, pp. [2] (title, blank), 1 2-6. With an engraved title-page, an engraved table, 3 naval plates and 29 double-page engraved charts, all with original hand-color, heightened in gold.
Cartes Marines: 2π1, binder’s blank. 1 leaf, pp. [2] (title, blank). With an engraved title-page and 9 double-page engraved charts, all with original hand-color, heightened in gold.
Bound in contemporary Dutch mottled calf. On the boards, a central gilt vignette of Atlas bearing the world (as an armillary sphere) surrounded by scrollwork. Two gilt roll borders, the inner with corner-ornaments of armillary spheres. On the spine, eight raised bands. In the panels, armillary spheres gilt. Title gilt to black calf in the second panel. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards. All edges of the text-block speckled red.
Rebacked, with the original back-strip laid down. Scuffed and chipped generally but mildly, with bumps and some wear to the extremities. Oxidizing and offsetting throughout, entirely consistent with original color. Repaired throughout with archival tissue in places where the oxidation has weakened the paper. Portrait bookplate of James Gibbs (dated 1736) to the front paste-down. Early ownership signature in ink of “P: Jackson” to the recto of the first free end-paper. Bookplate of Lord Wardington on the rear end-paper. In all, a lovely solid copy of a vast book.
Pieter Mortier (1661-1711; pron. “more-teer” rather than “more-tee-ay”) was the son of a French refugee who, after a brief stint in Paris, worked in Amsterdam as an engraver, mapmaker and bookseller; his illustrated bible is one of the great lavish works of engraving. The first item in this Sammelband is a piracy (“contre-façon”): he copied Alexis-Hubert Jaillot’s Neptune François chart-by-chart and printed it himself in Amsterdam while claiming it was from Paris. This was quite common on the Continent, especially in Holland, which had much looser copy-right restrictions than other countries. While the Dutch largely dominated the XVIIc market for atlases, Jaillot, who had at his disposal the stock of Nicolas Sanson, was an exception; Mortier’s ingenious solution was simply to copy and to undercut him.
As we know from contemporary sales-catalogues, the two works bound together in this volume were offered as a set. Most interesting is the way coloration affected price; Mortier charged 44 florins for the two works together uncolored and 84 florins for the “très-belle Enluminure, avec de l’or,” very beautifully colored and heightened with gold, as is the present item. This is surely near the very pinnacle of Dutch atlas-production.[1]
The volume passed through quite distinguished hands. James Gibbs (1682–1754) was one of Britain’s great architects. Saint Martin-in-the-Fields in London, the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford and Senate House in Cambridge are all his designs. As a Catholic and non-Palladian, he stood apart from his peers in the discipline, both in his style and in his patrons. A catalogue library, in excess of 600 volumes, shows him a distinguished and catholic-minded collector; his superb picture collection perhaps predicts the quality of color in the present example.
Of Mr. Jackson we must remain silent, but of the book’s final recorded owner — Christopher Henry Beaumont Pease (1924–2005), 2nd Baron Wardington — much can be said. He was a book collector of great renown, building a splendid library at his Oxfordshire home, Wardington Manor. His particular interest was the very finest examples of cartography. His sale (Sotheby’s London, part II: 10 October 2006, lot 317: £50,000) was a landmark in the field, and its catalogue practically a reference work in its own right.
Neptune: Pastoureau, Neptune Français Ba; Koeman M. Mor 1.
Cartes Maritimes: Koeman M. Mor 5.
[1] The coloration of the present copy has been described at length by Truusje Goedings, the nonpareil specialist in Dutch coloration; her full analysis is available upon request.
Item #JLR0349
Price: $450,000