Cartography - Lot 577

Cartography SCHRADER (Jean Daniel François dit Franz) Massif de Gavarnie et du Mont Perdu. Surveyed, drawn and designed by F. SCHRADER (First edition) 1914. Scale 1:20,000. Published with the support of the Club Alpin Français. Paris, Barrère, 1914. Sheet 680 X 760 mm engraved by ERHARD, printed in color, captioned on Lafuma, Bertholet et Navarre à Voiron. Autograph letter from the author to an anonymous addressee (name crossed out). Canvas card, accordion-folded to in-8 format. A fine copy. First edition of this very important card. It is very beautiful, with its unusual shades of orange and violet, not found in the 1932 (with modifications by M. HEID) and 1949 reprints. The artist's rigorous scientific approach is evident throughout. This is the first 20,000-scale map of the Pyrenees (the famous Mont Perdu map of 1874 is 40,000-scale), and the last by SCHRADER, who had planned a continuation of this map towards Arazas. It took him six years to complete it, resuming the work begun in 1873 at the urging of his friends and above all H. VALLOT, MAURY and EYDOUX, who in 1907 had undertaken a map of the Pyrenees at this scale (of which only minutes exist), but had left the Gavarnie sector aside because it represented "special difficulties too considerable to be tackled with any chance of success by an isolated topographer". (Musée Pyr. : 3 siècles de Cartog. 1978 n° 108)( Heïd : F. Schrader et son OEuvre p. XXI et seq.)(Massie cartog. 94 to 98)