By Louis Charles Desnos

Desnos held the coveted position of Royal Globemaker for the Danish King, Christian VII . For this he received an annual stipend of 500 livres. In return he sent the king maps, books and atlases each year. He was a bookseller and publisher and produced a considerable body of work and is often associated with the geographers Zannoni and Louis Brion de la Tour (1756–1823). His large output of published maps sometimes earned him, among his detractors jealous of his fame, a bad reputation among other cartographers, who considered him unscrupulous and uncritical about what should and should not be publishable. Desnos had a long history of legal wrangling with other Parisian cartographers and publishers during this period. He had a reputation for publishing anything presented to him regardless of accuracy or copyright.

Hand-coloured copperplate engraving.

500mm x 305mm excluding mountboard

R6,000