Old Print of a Bull or Bison from the French North America, Canada, Ca.1760

About this piece

Boeuf de la Nouvelle France, an original copper engraving of a bison from the Abbé Prévost's Histoire générale des voyages, c.1760. The title is lettered at the top, and "Tome XV" and "N° I" are printed along the lower margin. The sheet is printed in black with a ruled frame.

The animal stands at the center facing left, drawn with a shaggy mane, curling hair and curved horns. It is shown in a pine and broadleaf landscape under a cloudy sky. A bare broken tree trunk rises at the right, with a small animal hanging from a branch above, and a second animal is faintly visible among the trees in the distance at the left. The heavy shoulder hump and shaggy coat are drawn as a European artist working from descriptions might render the American bison, which was still new to readers of French travel literature.

New France, the French colonial territory in North America, extended from Newfoundland to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi, until France ceded it to Great Britain and Spain in 1763. Prévost's collection of travel accounts, which appeared from 1746 on, was published in many volumes.