About this sheet
This antique natural history print shows a polar bear, a flying lemur, a flying fox, a pipistrelle bat, a hedgehog, a water shrew, a mole, a wolverine and an American badger, an original plate from C. F. A. Kolb's Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere, published in Stuttgart by Hoffmann circa 1890. A large white polar bear stands at the centre of a wooded rocky landscape, while bats hang and fly above it and smaller insect eating mammals move through the ferns below.
The sheet is lettered 1. Abtheilung and Säugethiere 2. Blatt at the head, and every animal is numbered and named beneath the image in German Fraktur with its Latin name, here Fliegender Maki, Vampyr, Zwergfledermaus, Gem. Igel, Wasserspitzmaus, Gem. Maulwurf, Eisbär, Vielfrass and Amerik. Dachs. The polar bear, Ursus maritimus, is the obvious centrepiece, but the plate is equally charming for its hedgehog, mole and badger, the kind of familiar European animals that Kolb set beside exotic ones so that children could compare them.
Carl Friedrich August Kolb designed his Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere as an Anschauungs Unterricht für Schule und Haus, an object lesson for school and home, and the title page of this second edition announces 123 coloured figures on 18 double folio plates together with 63 woodcuts in the text. The publisher was the Hoffmann'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung of Wilhelm Nübling in Stuttgart, and the plates were printed by colour lithography, a process that allowed German publishers of the later nineteenth century to issue large, bright teaching images at a price schools and families could afford. Kolb arranged the mammals in systematic order across the series, so each sheet brings together related animals from several continents in a single imagined landscape. This sheet is the first plate present in the group, since the first Blatt of the series is not among these scans.
With its broad double page format and lively colour, this chromolithograph suits a study, a library, a child's room or a natural history wall, and it can be grouped with other plates from the same series to build a set.
The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a faint centre fold as issued and a few small spots confined to the margins; the image itself is clean and strong.
This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.
