Antique Engraving of Buenos Aires, City and Harbor View, 1867

The city and harbor of Buenos Aires seen from the Río de la Plata, an original steel engraving printed in Paris in the 1860s. The plate is lettered "Buenos-Ayres", drawn by Lebreton and engraved by Outhwaite, with the printer's line of Chardon.

Choppy water fills the foreground, crossed by small sailing boats, with a larger schooner at the left and a steamer at the right. The low city lies along the far shore, its skyline of church towers and domes rising above a mass of flat roofs, and a long landing pier or breakwater runs along the waterfront. Heavy clouds fill the sky.

Buenos Aires was the leading port of the Río de la Plata and the main commercial center of Argentina, and the plate shows the approach by water that most visitors from Europe would have known. It belongs to a series of South American views published around 1867.