Rigobert Bonne
1729-1795, French Engineer and Globemaker
Bonne was a prolific French cartographer, whose main interest lay in the production of marine charts. Active between 1760 and 1788, working for the French Hydrological Office, he was eventually rewarded with the appointment as Hydrographer to the French King.
Although he issued other works, including many for fellow cartographers, his large output of charts, some of which appeared in the Atlas Maritime, bear considerable mention.
It is however, through his small maps, which he prepared for Guillaume Raynal's 1780 atlas, the 'Atlas Toutes Les Parties Connues du Globe Terrestre', that he best known today. His association with Nicholas Desmarset on the 'Atlas Encyclopedique', is also of great merit, although the maps are lacking in many of the finer decorative embelishments, they are highly detailed and are useful resources in relation to coverage of newly discovered territories.
