Atlantic Canada Map 1744 Regional Print - Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

Emanuel Bowen engraved this map of Newfoundland, Cape Breton and the neighbouring Atlantic coast in 1744, working from his London print shop at a time when he held the rare distinction of holding royal mapmaker's warrants from both George II of England and Louis XV of France simultaneously. Bowen was, by reputation, one of the most technically skilled engravers of his generation, and though he would die in poverty, his workshop trained two apprentices, Thomas Kitchin and Thomas Jeffreys, who went on to become leading British cartographers in their own right, both represented elsewhere in this collection. This sheet is characteristically dense with decorative flourish, its compass rose and cartouche rendered with the same careful hand as the coastline itself, rather than the plainer style common on contemporary French charts of the same waters. The region it covers, contested fishing grounds and strategic harbours claimed by both France and Britain, sat at the center of colonial rivalry in the very year King George's War broke out between the two crowns.

Newfoundland occupies the map's eastern anchor, its coastline already well charted thanks to more than two centuries of transatlantic cod fishing by French, English, Spanish and Portuguese crews. Cape Breton Island, ceded to France after Queen Anne's War and home to the fortress of Louisbourg, appears as a compact but strategically vital French stronghold guarding the mouth of the St. Lawrence. St. John's Island, known today as Prince Edward Island, and Anticosti sit in the gulf between the two larger landmasses, while Nova Scotia, wrested from France in 1713 and only nominally under British control at this date, stretches south toward New England. Labrador closes out the map's northern edge, sparsely detailed in keeping with how little of its interior had actually been surveyed by 1744.

A natural gift for anyone with roots in Newfoundland, Cape Breton or the wider Maritimes, or for a collector drawn to the decorative English engraving of Bowen's workshop. TheMapVault also carries a later Atlantic Canada map from 1857, plus this batch's own 1565 Ramusio/Gastaldi and 1755 Homann Heirs sheets, both of which touch this same coastline; this 1744 Bowen map is by far the earliest of the group produced after direct English survey work, and the most tightly focused specifically on the Newfoundland-Cape Breton-Nova Scotia coastline rather than treating it as one edge of a wider composition. It's supplied unframed and available across the full range of nine sizes, from a modest desk print to a large-format piece.