Spain & Portugal Map 1836 Environs of Madrid Inset Print - Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia

Henry S. Tanner of Philadelphia published this Spain and Portugal, with an inset titled Environs of Madrid, in his New Universal Atlas, and the catalog dates the map to 1836 while the atlas copy on which it was cataloged is the 1842 edition, the last that Tanner published. The sheet is in full color, measures 40 by 32 centimeters at a scale of 1:3,100,000, and shows relief in hachures. Tanner's atlas was among the first American world atlases, and each of its pages carries the running header Tanner's Universal Atlas. The map presents the Iberian Peninsula as an American atlas buyer of the Jacksonian age would have seen it, with the Spanish capital enlarged in an inset of its own.

In 1836 Spain was deep in the First Carlist War, which pitted the supporters of the young Queen Isabella II against those of her uncle Don Carlos, and Madrid, the capital that the inset enlarges, was held by the queen's government. Portugal was under Queen Maria II, whose crown had been secured in the civil war that ended in 1834. The catalog notes full color and hachures across the peninsula, and the inset of the environs shows roads, towns and features around the Spanish capital. Lisbon, Barcelona and Seville were the other great cities of the peninsula, and the Tagus and the Ebro its principal rivers.

A collector of American atlas cartography, a student of the Carlist wars, or a family with roots in Castile will find a distinctive gift here. TheMapVault's Mitchell sheet of 1846 also carries an Environs of Madrid inset, since Mitchell took over Tanner's atlas, whereas this Tanner sheet is the earlier version from the original publisher, drawn when the Carlist war was still undecided. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.