Bonn on the Rhine, German Harvest Landscape, Antique Steel Engraving, circa 1865

About this sheet

This antique steel engraving of Bonn shows the university town on the Rhine seen from a hillside above, with harvesters at work in the foreground and an ox drawn wagon piled with hay. The plate is lettered "Bonn" and was published by William Mackenzie of London, Edinburgh and Glasgow in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

The composition combines a rural genre scene with a town view. Figures rest and work among the sheaves, the patient oxen lean into the yoke, and beyond them the roofs of Bonn spread across the plain toward the river, dominated by the towers of the Romanesque minster. The broad Rhine and the distant hills close the view. Bonn was well known to British travelers of the period as the first town of the scenic middle Rhine when approached from Cologne, and as the seat of a university founded in 1818.

The plate carries the imprint of William Mackenzie, London, Edinburgh and Glasgow, a Scottish publisher known for illustrated subscription books issued in parts from the middle of the nineteenth century. The plate itself carries no date, and the book in which it appeared has not been identified with certainty, so it is dated here to circa 1865, in line with Mackenzie's steel engraved topographical plates of the 1860s and 1870s. The drawing credit at lower left appears to read B. Foster; the reading is not certain, and the plate is therefore not attributed to a named artist as a matter of fact. The engraver's name at lower right appears to read T. A. Prior, which would indicate Thomas Abiel Prior, one of the leading English landscape engravers on steel, but the reading is marked as doubtful and is given here only as a probable attribution.

The print is an uncolored steel engraving with a wide tonal range, from the dark foreground figures to the pale distance, and it shows the fine, even line work for which the best steel engravers were admired. This view of Bonn would appeal to collectors of German topography or of rural harvest scenes, and it would look attractive in a sitting room or study, framed simply, perhaps alongside other Rhine plates from the same series.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a few small spots and a faint smudge in the margins; the steel engraved landscape itself is clean and crisp.

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.