Australia & New Zealand Map 1860 Regional Print - Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Christchurch

F.A. Garnier of Paris drew this decorative map of Australia, New Zealand and neighboring islands in 1860, titled in French as Australie et Nouvelle-Zelande. Garnier lived from 1803 to 1863, and his atlas is rare and highly sought after for its fine colors and elegant engraving. This sheet is elegantly colored and carries Garnier's trademark title vignette, which gives it a Parisian polish that sets it apart from English and American maps of the same region. The sheet takes in the whole of the South Pacific's western rim, from the Australian mainland across the Tasman Sea to the two islands of New Zealand. It is a regional map of the South-West Pacific, drawn in 1860, the year after Queensland became a separate colony and at the moment when war broke out in New Zealand's North Island.

Garnier's map covers the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, and the newly created Queensland on the north-east. Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide had grown rich on wool and gold, and Auckland, New Zealand's capital until 1865, was the principal town of the North Island. Wellington, founded in 1840 by the New Zealand Company, was soon to replace it. The neighboring islands include New Caledonia, which France had annexed in 1853, so a Paris publisher had good reason to map the region. The sheet reflects a time when the Pacific was being divided among European powers.

A Francophile collector, a family with New Caledonian or French-Pacific ties, or anyone with roots in the Australian colonies will find a distinctive gift here. TheMapVault's Kiepert map of 1889 is a German-language view of the same two countries, and Colton's 1866 New York sheet is an English-language American view of Australia alone; Garnier's 1860 sheet is the French one, with elegant coloring. It predates Kiepert's sheet by nearly three decades. 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.