Chinese Sea Bream, Catfish and Crucian Carp, Antique Print, 1855

About this sheet

This is an original antique chromolithographed plate of Chinese fishes, the third of the nine plates of Basilewsky's Ichthyographia Chinae Borealis. Four fishes share the plate, each numbered and lettered in Latin along the lower margin: the sea bream Pagrus magrocephalus, the long eel Muraena pekinensis, the crucian carp Carassius pekinensis and the whiskered catfish Silurus Asotus. The sheet is lettered Tabula the third and the printer's line of Bachmann runs at the foot.

The plate belongs to Ichthyographia Chinae Borealis, the account of the fishes of northern China that Stepan Basilewsky wrote in Peking in January 1852 and published in 1855 in the tenth volume of the Nouveaux Memoires of the Imperial Society of Naturalists of Moscow. The nine plates were chromolithographed at Moscow by Bachmann from paintings made directly from the fish by a Chinese artist.

Silurus asotus, the Amur catfish, is one of the common food fishes of northern China and this is one of its earliest colored portraits. The crowded arrangement of four species on a single plate gives the sheet an agreeable density that works well framed on its own. 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, with light gray mottling and a few faint specks in the right 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.