Antique Chromolithographic Bird Print of the Dipper, Wagtail and Wren, 1898
$100 (£75, €90)
Period original, not a reproduction.
Shipped from the Netherlands, flat, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.
- Date
- 1898
- Size
- 12.6 × 9.6 in (32 × 24.5 cm)
- Condition
- Good
- Period
- Late 19th century
- Section
- Birds
- Reference
- f_26556842
Dipper, Wagtails and Wrens, an original chromolithograph from the natural history set Animate Creation, published in New York by Selmar Hess in 1898. The plate is lettered "Phil. L. Prang & Co." at the lower left of the image, with "Selmar Hess, Publisher, N.Y." below it and the title "Dipper, Wagtails, and Wrens" beneath.
A woodland stream is the setting. A white-breasted dipper with a chestnut belly stands on a mossy stone at the center, beak raised. Above it, three wrens perch on branches and a stump, and in the foreground two wagtails with yellow underparts and long tails stand on the wet stones at the water's edge. The colors are built up in the rich, layered tones of the chromolithographic process, with deep greens in the trees and yellow and chestnut for the birds.
Louis Prang (1824 to 1909) was a German-born American printer and publisher in Boston whose firm was the leading American house for color lithography in the later nineteenth century. The species shown are birds of European streams and woods.
