Eastern Hemisphere Mappe-monde sur le plan dun Méridien, hemisphere Oriental - Rigobert Bonne - 1770

Attractive and finely engraved circular chart shows the southern regions of North America, South America, the South Pacific Ocean, Australia and New Zealand, drawn with a south polar projection. Australia is named Nouvelle Hollande and is still connected to Terre de Diemen. Two spheres are located on either side of the central chart, showing the circles around the earth of the latitudes, tropics, equator, zodiac and horizons. A fine example of the work of Rigobert Bonne, the Royal Hydrographer in Paris.

Rigobert Bonne (1727-1794) was an influential French cartographer of the late-eighteenth century. Born in the Lorraine region of France, Bonne came to Paris to study and practice cartography. He was a skilled cartographer and hydrographer and succeeded Jacques Nicolas Bellin as Royal Hydrographer at the Depot de la Marine in 1773. He published many charts for the Depot, including some of those for the Atlas Maritime of 1762. In addition to his work at the Depot, he is  best known for his work on the maps of the Atlas Encyclopedique (1788) which he did with Nicholas Desmarest. He also made the maps for the Abbe Raynals’ famous Atlas de Toutes Les Parties Connues du Globe Terrestre (1780).

More than his individual works, Bonne is also important for the history of cartography because of the larger trends exemplified by his work. In Bonne’s maps, it is possible to see the decisive shift from the elaborate decorations of the seventeenth century and the less ornate, yet still prominent embellishments of the early to mid-eighteenth century. By contrast, Bonne’s work was simple, unadorned, and practical. This aesthetic shift, and the detail and precision of his geography, make Bonne an important figure in mapping history.