Brunsvigia Candelabra Lily Flower Head, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1815

This antique botanical print from Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows the spectacular flower head of a Brunsvigia, the candelabra lily of South Africa, probably Josephine's lily. The sheet is printed in landscape format, with the heading Pflanzen CXXXVI running up the right margin and the Vienna mark XV.B.9 on the left.

A single thick stem carries a great sphere of long radiating stalks, each ending in a curled pink and red lily flower, filling the whole plate. Brunsvigia josephinae was named after the Empress Josephine, whose garden at Malmaison flowered it in the early 1800s, and it was painted by Redoute. The Bilderbuch version brings that fashionable exotic to a wider audience, and the plate makes a bold, almost abstract image on the wall.

Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747 to 1822) began his Bilderbuch fuer Kinder in Weimar in 1790 as a picture encyclopaedia for young readers, and over four decades it grew to almost 1,200 plates on plants, animals, peoples, antiquities and the sciences. Its success led to other editions, and this sheet comes from the Vienna edition begun by Anton Pichler as the Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend, with text in German and French; Pichler issued the first ten volumes, and the later volumes, including this one, are believed to have been issued by B. Ph. Bauer in Vienna. The Vienna plates were newly engraved after the Weimar originals, keep the Weimar subject numbering in a heading in German, Latin and French, and carry a volume and plate number in the lower margin, here the mark XV.B.9. Vienna volume XV follows Weimar volume VIII, which appeared in 1813, so this plate was published no earlier than that. The plate is a copper engraving with original hand colour, as the Vienna volumes were issued coloured.

A plate like this suits a kitchen, study or garden room, and it hangs well in a group with other Bertuch botanical sheets of the same size. For a collector it is also a neat example of how the Bilderbuch travelled beyond Weimar in the years around 1800.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, faint show through of the verso text, a brown stain in the lower left margin and small nicks at the right edge.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.