Le Chasselas Musque, Kerner Hand Colored Grape Engraving, circa 1811

About this sheet

This antique stipple engraving, finished by hand in watercolor and body color, of the grape variety Le Chasselas Musque comes from Johann Simon von Kerner's Le Raisin, ses especes et varietes, made at Stuttgart about 1811. The sheet shows a single trailing shoot of the muscat Chasselas vine laid across the bare sheet, two broad lobed leaves turning from green to bronze, a close packed bunch of pale amber berries hanging below them and, beneath, two separate berries painted whole and in section to show the flesh and the pips.

The sheet belongs to Le Raisin, ses especes et varietes, dessinees et colorees d'apres nature, the great vine book of Johann Simon von Kerner, published at Stuttgart and dated about 1811. Kerner was court painter and botanical draftsman to the Duke of Wuerttemberg and had already produced the Abbildung aller oekonomischen Pflanzen before he turned to the vine. The work was issued in parts over more than a decade and is believed to have been completed in only two copies.

The Chasselas musque is the perfumed form of the great table grape of Switzerland and the upper Rhine, and Kerner gives it the full treatment the work reserves for named varieties: the cane, the leaf from both faces, the bunch, and the dissected single berry that makes the sheet a working botanical record rather than a decoration. The medium is a stipple engraving on wove paper, finished by hand in watercolor and heightened in places with body color, so that the fine printed dots carry the drawing and the washes carry the modeling of the leaves and the bloom on the berries. The variety name below the image is written in pen. A sheet of this size carries a room on its own. Float mounted in a wide plain mount behind glass and framed in a simple dark molding it suits a dining room, a kitchen of some ambition or a wine room, and the bare ground around the vine keeps it from ever looking heavy.

Even age toning. Handling soiling along the top edge. Scattered light foxing in the margin. All four corners complete. Minor edge wear, shallow nicks along the left.

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.