Vintage Jacques Liozu Nevada Pictorial Map, Framed, c. 1946–1949
Viridian Eclection
The Piece A colour pictorial map of Nevada by the French illustrator Jacques Liozu, matted in cream and set in a blue-painted frame with a gilt inner slip. The state is drawn in dusty rose with the...
The Piece
A colour pictorial map of Nevada by the French illustrator Jacques Liozu, matted in cream and set in a blue-painted frame with a gilt inner slip.
The state is drawn in dusty rose with the ranges hatched across it, and Liozu has filled the space with small working figures rather than symbols. Sheep and cattle across the Black Rock and the Santa Rosa range. A prospector panning at Wells. A miner pushing a silver car at Battle Mountain. A woman with a basket of corn, fruit and potatoes at Carson City. Gold mining and a canvas tent through the Monitor Range, lead and copper smelting at Ely, and the Lehman Caves drawn as a black cavern mouth. A man in a loud checked suit leans on a touring car above Las Vegas, and Boulder Dam is sketched into the Colorado at the bottom corner. At Reno, two figures stand outside a low building with smoke rising, which is as close as a 1940s French guidebook came to drawing a casino.
The cartouche in the lower left sets a bearded prospector with his pick and two sacks of ore against a compass rose, holding a ribbon scroll lettered NEVADA over a scale of miles. Liozu signed at the lower edge.
Place names run the length of the state: Reno, Virginia City with the Comstock Lode, Carson City, Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Austin, Eureka, Elko, Palisade, Wells, Ely, Pioche, Tonopah, Goldfield, Las Vegas and Searchlight.
History & Provenance
Jacques Liozu, 1910 to 1974, was a French painter and illustrator best known for pictorial maps. He drew a complete set of small American state maps for Les États-Unis d'Amérique, one volume of Doré Ogrizek's Le Monde en Couleurs series published by Éditions Odé in Paris, illustrated by Liozu alongside Beuville and Pierre Noël. The state maps are dated 1946 by the trade and a recorded Odé printing of the volume runs to 517 pages. This is that Nevada plate.
Two details inside the drawing confirm the period without reference to any catalogue.
The dam on the Colorado is lettered Boulder Dam. Congress permanently restored the name Hoover Dam in 1947, so the material Liozu worked from predates that or was compiled while Boulder Dam was still ordinary usage.
The state he drew is the pre-war mining and ranching Nevada, not the one that came after. Ely still has its smelter stacks, Goldfield and Tonopah still have men working ground, and Las Vegas gets one figure and a car while Reno gets the smoke and the crowd. Within a decade that ordering had reversed completely. The map caught Nevada in the last moment when the north was the story and the south was a note in the corner.
Liozu drew all forty-eight states and most of them are pleasant and interchangeable. This one is not, because the subject is a state whose entire mythology is compressed into a single sheet: the Comstock, the silver cars, the prospectors, the ranges, and Reno smoking quietly at the western edge.
Product Details
| Type | Framed colour pictorial map plate |
| Artist | Jacques Liozu, French, 1910–1974 |
| Source | Les États-Unis d'Amérique, Doré Ogrizek, Le Monde en Couleurs, Éditions Odé, Paris |
| Signature | JACQUES LIOZU printed at the lower edge of the map |
| Era | c. 1946–1949 |
| Presentation | Cream mat in a blue-painted wood frame with a gilt inner slip, glazed |
| Image | 4 in. wide by 5.5 in. high |
| Frame | 7.5 in. wide by 9.5 in. high |
| Condition | Map clean and bright with strong colour and no foxing, tears or losses found. Frame with light wear to the painted surface and the gilt slip consistent with age. Ready to hang. |
Why It Belongs in Your Home
Small framed maps are the most useful pictures there are. They fill the awkward spaces that a large picture cannot, a hallway between doors, the wall above a light switch, the gap beside a bookcase, and they hold up to being looked at closely, which is where all the detail in this one lives.
For anyone with a connection to Nevada it does something a decorative map cannot. It names the towns, it draws what each of them did for a living, and it does it in the hand of a Frenchman who clearly enjoyed the place. Hang it where people will stand close enough to find Pioche and Searchlight, and it will start conversations.
Every piece is packed with professional-grade materials: multiple foam layers, double-boxing, directional and fragile handling labels. For large furniture we use custom timber crating. We photograph packing before dispatch and can provide images on request.
White-glove delivery is complimentary within 100 miles of Reno, NV. National shipping quotes provided at checkout. All shipments are photographed and documented. Damage claims must be filed with the carrier; we provide all documentation needed to support your claim.
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