Chinese Perch, Carp and Croaker, Antique Chromolithograph, 1855
€ 295
Original antique · The actual sheet photographed · Certificate of authenticity on request · Sold unframed · Worldwide shipping from € 15 (rates)
Date
1855
Mapmaker / artist
Stepan Basilewsky, with the figures painted from nature by a Chinese artist
Publisher
Societe Imperiale des Naturalistes de Moscou, Moscow
Technique
Chromolithograph
Coloring
Printed color
Sheet size
28 × 21 cm (11.0 × 8.3 in)
Condition
Good
Reference
BG-14475-1-1
What the condition grades mean
Excellent
Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good
Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good
Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair
Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Condition
Even age toning. Handling soiling along the top edge. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete.
About this sheet
This is an original antique chromolithographed plate of Chinese fishes, the first of the nine plates of Basilewsky's Ichthyographia Chinae Borealis. Three fishes fill the sheet in printed color, each numbered and named in Latin along the foot: the perch Perca Chua-tsi at the top, the heavy bodied Cyprinus obesus in the middle and the croaker Sciaena Ten-lo below. The upper left corner is lettered for the tenth volume of the Nouveaux Memoires and the upper right gives the plate as Tabula the first. The printer's line at the foot reads Chromolith. de Bachmann.
It comes from Basilewsky's Ichthyographia Chinae Borealis, printed in 1855 in the tenth volume of the Nouveaux Memoires of the Imperial Society of Naturalists of Moscow from a text written in Peking three years earlier. All nine plates were chromolithographed by Bachmann in Moscow after paintings taken from the living fish by a Chinese painter working for the author.
Basilewsky was a physician attached to the Russian ecclesiastical mission in Peking and the fishes on these plates were painted from fresh specimens by a Chinese artist working to his direction. Several species were first named here, among them Mugil so-iuy on a later plate, the name that gave the so-iuy mullet its common name. Plates from this work belong with serious natural history or with Chinese material. A plate of this kind frames well in plain dark wood and sits happily in a kitchen, a study or a hallway, alone or in a run with its companions.
Even age toning. Handling soiling along the top edge. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete.
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.
