Antique Natural HistoryOriginal plates from the naturalists' books, 1600s to 1900s
Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796

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Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796, close-up 1Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796, close-up 2Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796, close-up 3Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796, close-up 4Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796, close-up 5Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796, close-up 6Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796, close-up 7

Framed and on the wall

Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796, shown framedOriginal Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796, shown framed on a wall

Frame and rooms are illustrations of how the print could look; the description says what is included.

Original Antique Print of Seven Robins, Bluethroats and Yellowthroats, 1796

£265 ($350, €310)

Period original, not a reproduction.

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Shipped from the Netherlands, flat, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.

Date
1796
Size
9.4 × 7.7 in (24 × 19.5 cm)
Condition
Good. Wear consistent with age and use. Good. Wear consistent with age and use. General age-related toning with scattered foxing, spotting and minor marks. Some marginal wear and small edge irregularities. Original hand coloring remains strong and attractive.
Period
18th century
Artist or book
Bertuch
Section
Birds
Reference
f_51424722

Seven small perching birds with red, blue and yellow throats, an original hand-colored copper engraving from Friedrich Justin Bertuch's Bilderbuch für Kinder, published in Weimar in 1796. The plate is lettered "Vögel XX" and "Oiseaux XX" at the top, with each bird numbered Fig. 1 to Fig. 7, and the engraver's signature is at the lower right. Bertuch's group heading is "Roth-, Blau- und Gelbkehlchen" (red-, blue- and yellow-throats).

The birds are arranged around the sheet, each on its own short branch. Several have the orange breasts of robins, two or three show a blue throat patch edged in white or orange, and one is yellow beneath with streaked wings. Colors range from brown and black through bright blue, yellow, orange and red. In the old description they include the common robin and American robin, the common and American bluethroat, and the yellowthroat, under eighteenth-century names such as Motacilla rubecula and Motacilla pensilis that no longer match modern species.

Bertuch (1747 to 1822) published the Bilderbuch für Kinder from 1790 as an illustrated encyclopedia for young readers, with hundreds of hand-colored plates on natural history, geography and technology.