1770 · Birds, Plants & Natural History
Engraving of the Long-Tailed Duck and Spur-Winged Lapwing by Seligmann, ca.1770
$650
€580 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Date
- 1770
- Kind
- Birds, Plants & Natural History
- Size
- 37 × 25 cm (14.6 × 9.8 in)
- Period
- Colonial America
- Reference
- BG-13978
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 long-tailed duck from Newfoundland and a spur-winged plover on one sheet, an original hand-colored copperplate engraving after George Edwards from Johann Michael Seligmann's Sammlung verschiedener ausländischer und seltener Vögel, Nuremberg, circa 1770. The plate is numbered "Tab. LXX" at the upper right and titled "Die langschwänzige Ente aus Neufoundland, und das Wasserhuhn mit gesporten Flügeln". Below the image are the Latin "Anas cauda longissima ex Newfoundland" and "Pluvialis alis calcare donatis", the French "Le Canard à longue queue de Terre-neuve et le Pluvier à ailes éperonnées", and the credits "G. Edwards ad viv. delin." and "Joh. Sebast. Leitner sculps."
The duck, in the foreground, stands on a flat pink rock at the water's edge, facing left, with a red bill, a pale head with a chestnut patch, black and white scapulars, a chestnut and blue wing and a very long tapering tail trailing to the right. Behind it, the plover perches on a weathered tree stump, a slender bird in brown and black with a white collar, a black cap and a dark chest. The ground is a small green islet in a blue band of water.
The Newfoundland bird is the American link in a plate that otherwise pairs it with a bird from elsewhere.