1856 · Birds, Plants & Natural History
Japanese Wrasse and Coral Grouper, Perry Expedition Print, 1856
$320
€290 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $50 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Date
- 1856
- Maker
- James Carson Brevoort, with the figures drawn by the artists of the United States Japan Expedition
- Kind
- Birds, Plants & Natural History
- Technique
- Lithograph
- Color
- Printed color
- Size
- 29.5 × 22 cm (11.6 × 8.7 in)
- Condition
- Good. Light uneven toning, browner toward the edges. Handling soiling along the bottom and top edges. All four corners complete.
- Period
- Westward Expansion & Civil War
- Reference
- BG-14475-2-6
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
This is an original antique lithographed plate of Japanese fishes from the official report of Commodore Perry's expedition to Japan, the eighth plate of its natural history series. Four figures are printed in color and named at the foot: the red coral grouper Serranus urodelus with its barred tail, the four colored wrasse Iulis quadricolor, and two figures of Iulis lutescens showing the difference between its phases. The sheet is headed Natural History Plate the eighth.
The plate was issued with the official Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan under Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, printed at Washington in 1856 by order of Congress. The fish were drawn from fresh specimens by the expedition's own artists while the squadron lay in Japanese waters, and the notes on them were written by the naturalist James Carson Brevoort. The drawing on this plate is credited to H. Patterson.
Wrasses change color and pattern as they grow and switch sex, which is why two figures of the one species appear here, and the plate catches a piece of natural history that was barely understood at the time. The reds and yellows are among the strongest in the series. The plates frame well in a simple pale frame and look well in a run of two or three along a hallway, a kitchen or a bathroom wall.
Light uneven toning, browner toward the edges. Handling soiling along the bottom and top edges. All four corners complete.
This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.
