Claude Roussel was born around 1655 in the Champagne region of France, where his father worked as a merchant in Bourbonne-les-Bains. He died in or around 1735. Little is known about his family background and education.
Operating from his Paris workshop under the sign "Au Lion d'Argent" on Rue Saint-Jacques, Roussel was active from approximately 1682 to 1725 as an engraver, publisher, and print merchant. Before shifting his primary business focus toward instrumental music typography later in his career, he specialised in cartographic engraving, executing numerous plans of Paris and regional charts between 1685 and 1695. His mapmaking achievements include producing the copperplate engravings for Jean-Baptiste d'Audiffret’s La Géographie ancienne, moderne et historique (1691), which featured regional maps of French provinces like Burgundy and Orléanais. His broader cartographic portfolio also included specialised coastal and historical subjects, notably a 1686 chart detailing the entrance to Lake Maracaibo and a 1723 chronological map illustrating the geography of the Holy Land.
Claude Roussel is remembered as a versatile Parisian artisan whose skilled copperplate engraving bridged the documentation of regional geography and the evolution of specialised French publishing at the turn of the 18th century.
Paris: ROUSSEL, [Claude?], 1717 (dated)
54.0 x 40.6 cm / 21.3 x 16.0 in
Description This intriguing city plan of Paris from the early 18th century shows what today is the core part of the metropolitan area of the French capital. Oriented to the northeast, it reaches from present-day Saint-Denis.....
Paris: LE ROUGE, Georges-Louis, c. 1748
65.1 x 51.0 cm / 25.6 x 20.1 in
Description This beautiful 18th century map of Paris and its environs shows what today is mostly the metropolitan area of the French capital as well as some of the adjacent Île-de-France communes. It reaches from.....