Exotic Finches and Hummingbird, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1805

About this sheet

This antique bird print from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows small exotic songbirds and a hummingbird arranged on a single flowering branch, an original hand coloured copperplate engraving headed Voegel XII. The specific species on the plate are not yet established and are being checked against Bertuch's text.

The birds appear in pairs numbered as figures one to three, which suggests that male and female of each kind are shown, among them a blue bird with a crimson head, a crimson crested bird and a pair with red bills and red eye stripes. Figure four is a hummingbird feeding at a large pink flower. The decorative branch with leaves, blossoms and a cluster of seed pods ties the composition together in a way that is unusual for the early bird plates.

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 II.B.14 places the sheet in volume 2 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 even toning, show through of text from the reverse and a small spot beside figure 3; the image is otherwise sound.

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.