About this sheet
This is an original pair of antique hand colored lithographs from Schinz and Brodtmann's Naturgeschichte und Abbildungen der Saeugethiere, Zurich, 1824 to 1829, sold together as a pair and not available singly. The sheet shows an Indian rhinoceros in profile facing right, the heavy armored plates of the hide drawn fold by fold, the single horn low on the snout and the whole animal set on a narrow band of green ground with a clear sky behind. The sheet shows a second study of the Indian rhinoceros, this one facing left, the animal younger and lighter in build than its companion, the neck and shoulder plates less deeply cut and the horn shorter, standing on the same narrow band of ground.
They are two original sheets sold together, and the set is never split. Both are original hand colored lithographs from Heinrich Rudolf Schinz's Naturgeschichte und Abbildungen der Saeugethiere, drawn on the stone and printed by Carl Joseph Brodtmann at Zurich between 1824 and 1829, and both carry the German common name and the Latin binomial lettered in script beneath the image.
The riveted plate armor of the Indian rhinoceros was the feature every European artist from Duerer onward seized on, and Brodtmann draws it from observation rather than from the old woodcut tradition. The lot carries two rhinoceros sheets, numbered 53 and 54 in the work. The work gives the one-horned rhinoceros two consecutive plates, which is unusual and suggests the author wanted both a mature and a younger animal on record. The two sheets were made to face one another across an opening and they are offered here as the pair they were drawn as. A matched group hung together reads as one piece of furniture on a wall rather than as several small pictures, and because the sheets are the same size they frame identically and line up without compromise. Framed alike in plain dark moldings with equal mounts they suit a hall, a stair, a study or a dining room.
Even age toning throughout. Light foxing in the margins of both sheets. All corners complete on every sheet.
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.
