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Hand-Colored Engraving of the American Variegated Teal by Seligmann, ca.1770
£485 ($640, €570)
Period original, not a reproduction.
Shipped from the Netherlands, flat, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.
- Date
- 1770
- Size
- 14.6 × 9.8 in (37 × 25 cm)
- Condition
- Good. Vibrant colors, minimal fading. Paper shows light toning and minor foxing. Some handling marks, mostly outside plate-mark, not affecting image quality.
- Period
- 18th century
- Artist or book
- Mark Catesby
- Section
- Birds
- Reference
- f_42338302
A teal from the American coast, titled "Scheckiges americanisches Kriechentlein", in an original hand-colored copperplate engraving from Johann Michael Seligmann's Sammlung verschiedener ausländischer und seltener Vögel, Nuremberg, circa 1770. The plate is numbered "Tab. C" at the upper left and lettered below with the Latin "Querquedula Americana variegata", "N° 100 IV Theil" and the French "Sarcelle d'Amerique", with the credits "M. Catesby ad viv. delin." at the left and "J. M. Seligmann sculps. et excud." at the right.
The bird floats on a flat band of gray-blue water, in profile and facing right, with a faint ripple around its body. The head is a soft mauve with a white crescent behind the eye and a broad black stripe across the crown, and the bill is dark slate. The breast is scalloped in buff and brown, the back is dark with long pale streaks, and the folded wing shows a broad patch of mauve and a bar of green and white. One webbed foot dangles below the body beneath the surface, a feature of the pose.
The plate comes from the volumes in which Seligmann reissued Mark Catesby's drawings of Carolina and Bahamas wildlife, engraved by Seligmann himself and lettered in German, Latin and French for continental readers.
