Antique Print of Arctic Skate or Gaimard’s Ray – Hand-Colored Lithograph, 1854

1854 · Views & Engravings

Antique Print of Arctic Skate or Gaimard’s Ray – Hand-Colored Lithograph, 1854

Name: Antique Print of Arctic Skate or Gaimard’s Ray – Hand-Colored Lithograph, 1854
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-09946
Price: 985 USD
Availability: InStock

$985

€880 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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

Date: 1854
Kind: Views & Engravings
Size: 48.7 × 34 cm (19.2 × 13.4 in)
Condition: Good. Very good overall. Minor foxing mostly in the outer margins. A small water stain is present at the bottom center edge, not affecting the main image. Plate impression strong, and coloring remains clean and detailed.
Period: Westward Expansion & Civil War
Reference: BG-09946

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

A skate seen from below, "La Raie de Gaimard," a hand-colored lithograph from the French scientific publication Voyage en Islande et au Groenland, published in Paris by Arthus Bertrand. The plate is headed "Zoologie" and numbered "Poissons Pl. 3" at the upper right. The old description gives it as 1845; the date field reads 1854.

The skate fills the upper part of the sheet, its broad diamond-shaped body drawn in olive and brown tones with fine radiating lines across the wings and a sharply pointed snout, and its long slender tail trailing to the lower left with small fins at the tip. The underside shows the mouth and gill slits and the pelvic fins, and a separate study at the lower right shows the plated teeth of the mouth, drawn in pale brown. The names of the artist Oudart and the engraver H. Blanchard appear in the lower margins.

The species is named for Joseph Paul Gaimard, the naval surgeon and naturalist who took part in French scientific voyages to the north in the 1830s.

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