Quebec, the capital of New-France, a Bishoprick and Seat of the Soverain Court

‘Thomas Johnston’s prospect of Quebec, which he executed in 1759 based on an earlier model, is the most important engraved view of that city, as well as the earliest executed by an American. Interest in the northern French settlement was particularly high in 1759: in that year the city fell to the English, a landmark event in the expansion of the British empire. With a commission from Stephen Whiting, a London printseller, the Boston engraver and craftsman set out to satisfy the curiosity of American and English audiences about the picturesque city without traveling there himself. … The prototype of his view is an inset map of Quebec by Nicolas de Fer published in 1718. … The de Fer inset of Quebec appears in volume 6 (1719) [of H.A. Chatelain’s Atlas Historique (Amsterdam 1705-1720)] on a large Chatelain map … “Carte de la Nouvelle France ou se voit le cours des Grandes Rivieres de S. Laurens & de Mississipi…”. But Johnston’s engraving most closely resembles an updated version of the Quebec inset engraved by Francois Chereau, and advertisements in the Boston papers boasted that it was “from the latest and most authentic French original, done at Paris.”’
(G.G. Deak, Picturing America, 1497-1899, Princeton, 1988, I, p.47)