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Framed and on the wall
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Frog Print of Oval Engystoma and Green Toad, c.1850, by Orbigny
£160 ($215, €190)
Period original, not a reproduction.
Shipped from the Netherlands, flat, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.
- Date
- 1850
- Size
- 9.7 × 6.3 in (24.7 × 16 cm)
- Condition
- Good. Some mild foxing at the margins, especially upper right. Main image remains sharp and clean, with vivid original hand coloring. No tears or repairs. A well-preserved 19th-century zoological print.
- Period
- Late 19th century
- Section
- Reptiles and amphibians
- Reference
- f_45338402
An oval-bodied burrowing frog and a green toad on one plate, "Reptiles Pl. 16," an original hand-colored engraving from the Dictionnaire universel d'histoire naturelle, edited by Charles d'Orbigny and published in Paris around 1850. The plate was drawn by Oudart and engraved by Mme Fournier.
The upper figure, "Engystome ovale (Engystoma ovale)," is a small, dark brown frog with a rounded body and yellow stripe along its sides, seen crouching from behind on open ground with a shrub and a sheet of water beyond. The lower figure, "Crapaud vert (Bufo viridis)," is a much larger toad in profile, its back a mosaic of green with red and orange warts and a yellow stripe down the center, standing among reeds at the edge of a pond. Both species are named in script at the foot, under the heading "Ordre des Batraciens Bufoniformes," with a note on scale.
The green toad is a European species, now classed as Bufotes viridis, so the plate pairs a New World frog of uncertain identity with an Old World toad in the encyclopedic manner of the dictionary.
