Antique Print of Greenland Shark with Detail Views – Paris, circa 1845

1845 · Views & Engravings

Antique Print of Greenland Shark with Detail Views – Paris, circa 1845

Name: Antique Print of Greenland Shark with Detail Views – Paris, circa 1845
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-09916
Price: 875 USD
Availability: InStock

$875

€780 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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

Date: 1845
Kind: Views & Engravings
Size: 34 × 48.7 cm (13.4 × 19.2 in)
Condition: Good. Good to very good. Some light foxing is visible, mostly confined to the margins. The main image is clear and the colors remain strong. Plate mark is visible. No restoration or repairs.
Period: Westward Expansion & Civil War
Reference: BG-09916

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 Greenland shark, an original hand-colored lithograph from the French scientific publication Voyage en Islande et au Groenland, published in Paris around 1845. The plate is lettered "Poissons Pl. 22" at the upper right and "Zoologie" at the top, with the title "La Leiche boréale" below the large figure.

The whole shark, in a soft brownish gray shading to a blue-gray belly, is drawn in profile at the lower part of the sheet, with its short rounded snout and small eye, and the pale gill slits and low fins. Above it three detail studies are set in a row and lettered A, B, C and D: the eye with its parasite attached at A, the rows of teeth of the upper and lower jaws at B and C, and a patch of the rough skin at D, colored in brown and blue. The names of the artist, the engraver and the printer (Langlumé) and the publisher's name Arthus Bertrand are set in the margins.

The shark is now called Somniosus microcephalus, and the plate comes from the zoology volumes of the voyage to Iceland and Greenland, a French government expedition of the late 1830s.

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