And from behind the painting, two old maps! A real-life mystery

An uncle over 100 years old dies in Marseilles, leaving an extensive art collection.  A niece takes one of the paintings, of a body of water and a figure of a lion, painted in 1791, out of its frame to clean it, only to discover two fragments of maps hidden between the canvas and the frame backing!

"And when I saw the maps, I thought of you," she said, taking a roll of cardboard out of her bag -  the maps!

No, it's not a Nancy Drew.  Nor is it exactly like Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence BBC series episode 1, where the mystery, as well as the fate of Britain, revolves around a secret treaty concealed behind a painting.

But nonetheless, a mystery!  What were these maps?  What were they doing behind the painting?

Here is the first.  (click on the image to see the full-size version). Clearly French.  But Hudson Bay, Treaty of Utrecht, Lac Nepigon?  And the big Lac, whose name is sliced through at the bottom...?  To the Internet! 

In the Treaty of Utrecht, if we all think hard back to 10th grade European history (and consult Wikipedia) we remember that France ceded the Hudson Bay Company's territories to Britain in 1713.  So the yellow and green line, which looks colored by hand (it actually looks slightly like crayon, and faded in places) is marking that boundary, and, knowing that Hudson Bay is in Canada, this appears to be a map of a part of present-day Canada.

 

So, one terminus post quem (an archaeology term!) - the map is later than 1713.

A terminus ante quem is Lac Nepigon - Wikipedia tells us that by 1883, the name of the lake appeared on maps as 'Nipigon'.  That's still a pretty big time range, though, 1713 to 1883.  Also, now we know that this lake puts us looking at part of present-day Ontario, with Lake Superior being the large lake at the bottom of the map.

Wonderfully, and pretty amazingly, there are digital libraries of old maps with easily-google-able contents.  We were able to determine that this map looked nearly exactly like a very famous 1755 map by John Mitchell, except for the fact that this one was in French.  A little more googling determined that this map is in fact, the French copy of the Mitchell map made by George Louis Le Rouge in 1756.  View the complete map, from a Library of Congress photo.  There's also some nice metadata about it in the David Rumsey Map Collection.  The full title of the map is:

Amerique Septentrionale avec les Routes, Distances en miles, Limites et Establissements Francois et Anglais. Par le Docteur Mitchel, Traduit de l'Anglois. A Paris, Par le Rouge Ingr. Geographe du Roy rue des Grands Augustins 1756.  

1756!  It is pretty much an exact tracing ('re-engraving') of Mitchell's map, with French text instead of English, and some additional annotations, such as in this photo (click for a full-size view).

Holding it up to the light and photographed from behind, you can see the watermark on the paper.  I can't really make it out, and as such we haven't been able to investigate this further.  It may even be only a part of the whole watermark, since this is only a part of the map.  But, the symbol in it may help in identification, and this would really help in identifying the origins of this specific map. (Anyone want to do a little sleuthing?)

Pretty exciting, huh?!  What's really interesting is to compare this to the present day maps of the same area (like google maps).  From some browsing/digging it appears that maps like this one were based on earlier maps and desccriptions of the area by explorers or trappers (hence some of the invented islands in Lake Superior?).  If I have time some day I might look further into this, but not now when we have a second map to explore.

Ok, on to the next map!

It was a good thing we had started with the Le Rouge map, because the second map was considerably more challenging to find. 

(click on the map to enlarge it)

New York.  And Boston in an inset.  New Hampshire, the Connecticut River.  Mostly in English, but some French notes.

But hey, wait a sec, since when did New Hampshire border New York?

Since before the American Revolution, as it happens.  Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys (militia) established the Vermont Republic in 1777.  (Thank you again, Wikipedia.)
Hey, hey, a terminus ante quem.  Wow - before 1777!

A bit of Googling later, and thanks to David Rumsey and his very impressive Map Collection (and even more impressive digital library with hi res scans), we discovered that the English, original version of this map is, "The Provinces of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire. (Northern section)" by Thomas Jefferys, 1776.  View the complete map here.

Long title: "The American Atlas: Or, A Geographical Description Of The Whole Continent Of America ... Engraved On Forty-Eight Copper Plates, By The Late Mr. Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to the King, and Others. London, Printed and Sold by R. Sayer and J. Bennett, Map and Print Sellers, No. 53, Fleet-Street. MDCCLXXVI."

Jefferys was Geographer to His Royal highness the Prince of Wales.  According to David Rumsey's site, this map was part of "one of the most important atlases of the American Revolutionary War period."

However, I have not yet been able to track down what this French version is.  The French mapmaker made the changes of translating the brief history of Boston fires and wards into French, and has added a note under the "Note" about the Connecticut River, paraphrasing "La Riviere de Conecticut fait Limite entre New-York et New-Hampshire".  Not sure why he (assuming a 'he') misspelled CT.

So which map, exactly, this is, remains a mystery, if anyone feels like investigating!

To sum up, what do we know - we have a 1756 and a 1776 map behind this 1791 painting.  Concealed, or used as framing material?  The working hypothesis we have is that whoever framed the painting recycled these old, outdated maps as good framing/backing material.  The least exciting, least imaginative possibility.  More intriguing would be if these particular fragments related to the painting in some way, or meant something to someone besides scrap paper.  What would help is to know something more about 18th century map publishing.  These were both very important maps, according to people in the know, so presumably they would have been the popular maps of the day?  Did lots of ordinary people have maps?  Did map publishers sell old, obsolete stock to framers in early recycling schemes? Did painters frame their own paintings?

In any case, we think they are pretty darn cool!  And we certainly enjoyed the treasure hunt of figuring out what these maps are, and learning some historical geography.