Portrait Explorer Captain James Cook with signature Picturesque Atlas McLeod H.B.Halls 1886

Antique engraving by H.B. Halls & Sons after artist William McLeod (1850-1929)

Henry Bryan Halls (1808-1884) was a line and stipple engraver who had been apprenticed to b. Smith then worked by for H.T.Ryall engraving portraits for the latter's "The Coronation of Queen Victoria" (1843). He emigrated to America in 1850 setting up a firm with his sons, Henry Bryan junior, Alfred Bryan and Charles Bryan, H.B.Hall & Sons. Specialists

Picturesque Atlas of Australasia Published in Sydney in 1886-88, the enormous, multi-volume attempt with words and pictures to describe the Australia of the time.Its publication was one of the most significant cultural projects in 19th-century Australia. Writers, artists, academics, and politicians came together to prepare a book of unprecedented grandeur and ambition, and a publishing company was established to publish it. The 1100+engravings on steel and wood contained in the Picturesque Atlas were among the finest engravings to be found anywhere in the world at this time, and many of the illustrations were specially commissioned works by leading Australian artists of the era, for the publication.

Image size = 250 x 180mm