Hand-Colored Vue d’Optique of the Harbour of Havana, Cuba, circa 1770

Name: Hand-Colored Vue d’Optique of the Harbour of Havana, Cuba, circa 1770
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-13592
Price: 685 USD
Availability: InStock

$685

€610 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.

Date: 1770
Kind: City Views & Plans
Size: 30 × 36.5 cm (11.8 × 14.4 in)
Condition: Good. General wear, but image is in clean condition with no faults within its plate-mark, making this optica print ideal for framing. Outside the plate imprint a bit scuffy. Please study image carefully.
Period: Colonial America
Places: Cuba
Reference: BG-13592

What the condition grades mean

Excellent: Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good: Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good: Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair: Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.

Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.

Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.

Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured. Delivery and import charges.

About this piece

Havana harbor in a hand-colored vue d'optique, an original engraving published in Paris by Daumont around 1770 and dated circa 1770 in the item fields. The title is engraved beneath the image in English and French, "A View General of the City de Havana of Amerique" and "Vue Generalle de la Ville de Havanne en Amerique", with the French title printed in reverse above the view. Optical prints of this kind were designed to be seen through a zograscope.

The view looks across the harbor toward the city. In the left foreground a large galleon fires its cannon, with smoke drifting across the water, and smaller sailing boats with their crews cross the channel. The castle tower at the harbor mouth stands at the center, and the chain boom can be seen stretched across the entrance. Beyond lie the city's roofs and church spires, ships at the quays and hills on the horizon. The naive coloring is standard for these prints, though the English version of the title is unusually inept.

By the middle of the eighteenth century Havana had more than seventy thousand inhabitants and was the third-largest city in the Americas, behind Lima and Mexico City but ahead of Boston and New York.

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