Close-ups
Framed and on the wall
Frame and rooms are illustrations of how the print could look; the description says what is included.
Japanese Stingfish and Sea Robin, Perry Expedition Print, 1856
£215 ($290, €260)
Period original, not a reproduction.
Shipped from the Netherlands, flat or rolled, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.
- Date
- 1856
- Size
- 11.6 × 8.7 in (29.5 × 22 cm)
- Technique
- Lithograph
- Coloring
- Printed color
- Condition
- Good. Light uneven toning, browner toward the edges. Handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. All four corners complete.
- Period
- Late 19th century
- Section
- Fish and shells
- Reference
- BG-14475-2-3
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.
This is an original antique lithographed plate of Japanese fishes from the official report of Commodore Perry's expedition to Japan, the fifth plate of its natural history series. Three fishes share the plate: the strange flattened Pelor japonicum and the rockfish Sebastes inermis, both lettered as drawn the size of life, and the sea robin Trigla burgeri with its winglike pectoral fins spread. All are numbered and named in Latin at the foot, under the Japan Expedition heading and Natural History Plate the fifth.
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.
Pelor and Trigla are two of the oddest shapes in the sea, one a lumpy bottom dweller and the other a fish that walks on finger like rays, and putting them on one sheet gives the plate real character. The life size note turns it into a specimen record as well as a picture. 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, right and top edges. All four corners complete.
This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.
