Birds, Plants & Natural History
18th Century Hand-Colored Engraving of the American Bittern by Seligmann
$740
€660 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Maker
- Mark Catesby
- Kind
- Birds, Plants & Natural History
- Size
- 37 × 25 cm (14.6 × 9.8 in)
- Reference
- BG-13986
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.
Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.
Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured.
Delivery and import charges.
About this piece
The American bittern, titled "Americanische Rohrdomel", in an original hand-colored copperplate engraving from Johann Michael Seligmann's Sammlung verschiedener ausländischer und seltener Vögel, an eighteenth-century Nuremberg collection of foreign and rare birds. The plate is numbered "Tab. LVI" at the upper right and lettered below with the Latin "Ardea stellaris Americana", "N° 56 IV Theil" and the French "Butor brun", with the credit "M. Catesby ad vivum delin." at the lower left and Seligmann's engraving credit at the lower right.
A single bird stands tall and upright on a small, low island of sand and grass, facing right, with its neck drawn up and its long, pointed bill held level. The plumage is warm brown on the head and breast and darker on the folded wing, where the feathers are edged and spotted in white, and the legs and long toes are a pale yellow-green. A blue-gray band of water stretches across the foreground and background, with a few tufts of grass and reeds at the sides and a small branch behind the bird at the right.
The bird and its setting come from Mark Catesby's drawings of the wildlife of the Carolinas and the Bahamas, which Seligmann re-engraved for German readers, with the captions in German, Latin and French.
