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Framed and on the wall
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The Red Bird of Surinam by J.M. Seligmann, Hand-Colored Engraving, 18th Century
€580 ($650, £490, €580)
Period original, not a reproduction.
Shipped from the Netherlands, flat, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.
- Date
- Not stated
- Size
- 14.7 × 9.6 in (37.3 × 24.3 cm)
- Condition
- Good. Vibrant colors, minimal fading. Paper shows light toning and minor foxing. Left edge supported by tape, leaving enough margin for framing. Some minor handling marks, mostly outside plate-mark, not affecting image quality.
- Section
- Birds
- Reference
- f_42704912
Garrulus ruber, Surinamensis, the red bird of Surinam, an original hand-colored copper engraving from Johann Michael Seligmann's Sammlung verschiedener auslaendischer und seltener Voegel, an eighteenth-century Nuremberg bird book. The plate is numbered "Tab. LXXVII" at the upper left and "77" at the foot, with the German title "Der Surinamische Rothvogel" at the top, the Latin name at the lower left and the French "L'Oiseau rouge" at the lower right.
The bird sits upright on a gnarled, bare branch rising from a stump, in profile to the right, with a short dark bill, a crimson cap, brown breast and back feathered like scales, and wings and a long tail washed in rose red. Low clumps of green foliage and a few stones fill the ground below. The lettering beneath the image credits G. Edwards as the draftsman and J. M. Seligmann as engraver and publisher at Nuremberg, and a privilege line stands at the center.
The design follows George Edwards's A Natural History of Uncommon Birds, whose plates Seligmann adapted for a German audience, and the sheet shows how a bird from the Guianas, known in Europe only from specimens, was drawn in the mid-eighteenth century.
