Crested Lark and Other Larks, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1805

About this sheet

This antique lark print shows eight ground dwelling songbirds, including an unmistakable crested lark, on an original hand coloured plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Voegel XIX. It belongs to the early bird plates of the series.

Most of the birds are streaked brown larks and pipit like birds, shown standing on mossy stones or perched on twigs so that their long hind claws and speckled breasts can be seen. The crested lark at lower right raises its pointed crest, and at the top a dark bird with a red throat patch provides a striking contrast. The individual species named in Bertuch's text for this plate have not all been confirmed, but the plate as a whole is clearly devoted to these birds of open fields.

The plate comes from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch, published in Vienna under the title Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend. Its source is the celebrated Bilderbuch fuer Kinder, the picture book for children conceived and edited by Friedrich Justin Bertuch in Weimar, whose plates were engraved afresh by Viennese engravers for this edition. Most plates carry their subject class and number in German, Latin and French across the top, so that the work could teach languages as well as natural history. Here the heading belongs to the series of birds, which Bertuch treated as one of the richest subject classes of the whole work. The small engraved mark IV.B.5 places the sheet in volume 4 of the Vienna edition, one of the volumes issued in Vienna in the first years of the nineteenth century.

It is a copperplate engraving, coloured by hand with watercolour in the manner of the Weimar original. The plate is signed by Jacob Xaver Schmuzer, one of the Viennese engravers who worked on this edition. Bertuch drew his images from the best natural history books of his time, and the result is a lively, accessible record of how the natural world was understood around 1800. Single plates from the Bilderbuch are popular with collectors of antique natural history prints, and a group of related plates makes a handsome display in a study, library or hallway.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning and a few tiny spots; the image is clean and well preserved.

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.