This is one of the earliest views of the Bay of San Francisco available and is from the ‘Atlas Pittoresque’ by Abel du Petit-Thouars’s which illustrated the ‘Voyage Autour du Monde sur la Fregate Venus’ published in Paris, 1841. The French in the nineteenth century undertook a number of scientifically orientated voyages of discovery in the Pacific Ocean. This is one of the first to have visited the San Francisco coast which occurred in 1837, 11 years before the discovery of gold. The view is drawn by Menard and lithographed by Leon Jean Baptiste Sabatier (d.1887). Ferguson (1941-69) no. 2970; Hill (1974) p. 91.