Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796
€ 310
Original antique · The actual sheet photographed · Certificate of authenticity on request · Sold unframed · Worldwide shipping from € 15 (rates)
Date
1796
Sheet size
24 × 19.5 cm (9.4 × 7.7 in)
Condition
Good
Reference
BG-14336-127
Condition
Wear consistent with age and use. Good. Wear consistent with age and use. General age-related toning with scattered foxing, spotting and minor marks. Some marginal wear and small edge irregularities. Original hand coloring remains strong and attractive.
About this sheet
Seven small perching birds with red, blue and yellow throats, an original hand-colored copper engraving from Friedrich Justin Bertuch's Bilderbuch für Kinder, published in Weimar in 1796. The plate is lettered "Vögel XX" and "Oiseaux XX" at the top, with each bird numbered Fig. 1 to Fig. 7, and the engraver's signature is at the lower right. Bertuch's group heading is "Roth-, Blau- und Gelbkehlchen" (red-, blue- and yellow-throats).
The birds are arranged around the sheet, each on its own short branch. Several have the orange breasts of robins, two or three show a blue throat patch edged in white or orange, and one is yellow beneath with streaked wings. Colors range from brown and black through bright blue, yellow, orange and red. In the old description they include the common robin and American robin, the common and American bluethroat, and the yellowthroat, under eighteenth-century names such as Motacilla rubecula and Motacilla pensilis that no longer match modern species.
Bertuch (1747 to 1822) published the Bilderbuch für Kinder from 1790 as an illustrated encyclopedia for young readers, with hundreds of hand-colored plates on natural history, geography and technology.
