DES BARRES, Joseph Frederick Wallet (1721-1824), after PIERIE, William (fl. late 18th century) & James NEWTON (1748-1804), View of Boston taken on the road to Dorchester

DES BARRES, Joseph Frederick Wallet (1721-1824), after PIERIE, William (fl. late 18th century) & James NEWTON (1748-1804).
View of Boston taken on the road to Dorchester.
Copperplate engraving.
London: F.W. DeBarres, 1776.
21 1/4" x 32" sheet, 33" x 43 1/2" framed.

Finest 18th Century View of Boston

First edition. Engraved by Newton after the drawing by British soldier and artist Pierie. "The artist William Pierie (Pierrie is presumably a misspelling by the engraver) was a British artillery officer who drew a series of views of the town and environs of Boston in 1773" (Deak, p. 87).

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"Although Des Barres was contemptuos of land surveying in comparison to sea charting, his maps shows differences in soil structure and types of beaches, and often include details of the fields, woods, and houses adjacent to the shore. His plans of harbors and the number of soundings in them, especially of those he surveyed himself, are impressive in contrast to any previous work. But it is the artistic excellence of his views, the sheer beauty of the work on them that he did or supervised, that gives a pleasure only those who open the pages of The Atlantic Neptune can realize. Contrast the engravings of the profiles of shoreline in an English Pilot or a West-India Pilot. In a time when there were no photographs, when the seaman could not count on his charts to be accurate, the identifying profiles and directions accompanying the charts were of vital importance. Des Barres, in such views as are shown in the figures here reproduced, raised the drawings of coastal profiles to a high art.

Des Barre's achievement as a hydrographer was immediately and widely recognized. In Paris, L'Esprit des Journaux, in reviewing The Atlantic Neptune, said: "[It is] one of the most remarkable products of human industry that has ever been given to the world through the arts of printing, and engraving... the most splendid collection of charts, plans and views ever published. Two hundred years later, the judgement has not changed." (Cumming, British Maps of Colonial America).