Chinese Snakehead, Catfish and Blue Carp, Antique Fish Print, 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-14475-1-9
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
Light uneven toning, browner toward the edges. Handling soiling along the bottom and right edges. Scattered light foxing in the margin. All four corners complete.
About this sheet
This is an original antique chromolithographed plate of Chinese fishes, the ninth of the nine plates of Basilewsky's Ichthyographia Chinae Borealis. The last plate of the work carries three fishes, numbered and lettered in Latin at the foot: the catfish Silurus calvarius, the blue crucian carp Carassius coeruleus and the snakehead Ophicephalus pekinensis, drawn with the long dorsal fin and blunt head that give the fish its name. The sheet is lettered Tabula the ninth and carries the Bachmann line.
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.
The snakehead is the fish that makes this plate, a famously tough predator that can breathe air and cross wet ground, and it was one of the species Basilewsky described from Peking. As the final plate of a work of only nine it is also the one that completes a run. 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.
Light uneven toning, browner toward the edges. Handling soiling along the bottom and right edges. Scattered light foxing 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.
