Spain & Portugal Map 1831 Georgian Atlas Print - Madrid, Lisbon, Valencia, Bilbao, Faro

Spain & Portugal was drawn and engraved by J. Dower and published by Henry Teesdale & Co. in London in 1831, one of the maps in the first edition of A New General Atlas of the World, which collected forty-seven maps. The catalog notes that later editions dropped Dower's name from the atlas title but kept it on the maps, and that the atlas is also known as Teesdale's Atlas. The sheet measures 41 by 34 centimeters at a scale of 1:3,700,000, with a graduated border of latitude and longitude and the prime meridian at Greenwich. Regions such as Galicia, Andalusia and Catalonia are distinguished by colored outlines, and roads, rivers and relief by hachures run across the whole peninsula.

Compiled for a British audience at a moment of rising interest in reference geography, the sheet reflects what London publishers knew of Iberia in the years after the Peninsular War, when British, French and Spanish armies had marched across the peninsula's roads. Madrid was the capital at the center of Spain, while Lisbon commanded the Atlantic coast of Portugal, and the Balearic Islands, which the sheet includes, lay off the Mediterranean shore beyond Valencia. The two countries were then at different political moments, Spain under Ferdinand VII and Portugal in civil war, so a map drawn with clear colored divisions had real value for merchants and travelers. Bilbao and Faro, at the northern and southern ends of the peninsula, were modest ports beside the capitals.

A collector of Georgian atlas cartography, a traveler with Portuguese or Spanish roots, or a reader of Peninsular War history will find a fine gift here. TheMapVault's Finley sheet of 1831 is an American view of the same peninsula in the same year, at the smaller scale of 1:4,500,000, whereas this London sheet is drawn at 1:3,700,000 with hand-colored outlines and a wider border of latitude and longitude. 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.