Birds, Plants & Natural History
Antique Hand-Colored Engraving of the American Pelican, 19th Century
$605
€540 · 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-13984
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 pelican, as Seligmann's engraver titled it, 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. LXII" at the upper right, titled "Der Americanische Pelican" at the top, and lettered below with the Latin "Pelicanus americanus", the French "Pelican americain" and "N° 62 IV Theil", with the credit "M. Catesby ad vivum delin." at the lower left.
A single large bird stands in profile facing left on a small patch of green ground, drawn tall and upright on long dark legs with webbed feet. Its plumage is white on the breast and belly, with a long band of glossy dark green and brown feathers along the wing, and the neck and head are brown and tan with a dark face. The bill is long and curved, in pale brown. Behind the bird, a fine outline drawing of a bird's head and its great bill, with the eye and nostril marked, is shown to scale as a second study, a feature of this plate that is not found on most others in the series.
The drawing is by Mark Catesby, whose Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands supplied many of the American birds in Seligmann's collection.
