Antique Chromolithographic Print of a Christmas Orchid or May Flower, ca.1880

Name: Antique Chromolithographic Print of a Christmas Orchid or May Flower, ca.1880
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-13009-249
Price: 200 USD
Availability: InStock

$200

€180 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.

Date: 1880
Kind: Birds, Plants & Natural History
Size: 26 × 17 cm (10.2 × 6.7 in)
Condition: Good. General age-related toning. Minor wear, blank verso. Please study image carefully.
Period: The Gilded Age
Places: Colombia & Venezuela
Reference: BG-13009-249

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

Cattleya Trianae Superba, an original chromolithograph of the Colombian orchid, published around 1880 in the Revue de l'Horticulture Belge et Étrangère. The plate is lettered "Cattleya Trianae Superba - C. T. Alba" below the image, with the credit to P. De Pannemaeker as painter and chromolithographer at Ghent, and the journal name is printed at the upper left.

Two blooms fill the sheet. The upper flower is a pink-petaled cattleya with a deep crimson lip edged with magenta and a yellow throat, set against long glossy green leaves. The lower flower is a pure white variety, with a pale yellow throat and ruffled lip, and a third white flower is partly visible at the right. The colors are laid in soft tints with careful shading in the petal folds.

Cattleya trianae is epiphytic and native to the cloud forests of Colombia, where it grows at about 1,500 to 2,000 meters. It is Colombia's national flower, and takes its name from the nineteenth-century Colombian botanist José Jerónimo Triana. Belgian horticultural journals of the period such as this one illustrated the orchids that were imported into Europe in the nineteenth century.

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