Antique Bison and Wildebeest Print with Zebu and Gazelle, Kolb, circa 1890

This antique natural history print shows an American bison, a wildebeest, a zebu, a gazelle, a klipspringer and a musk deer, an original plate from C. F. A. Kolb's Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere, published in Stuttgart by Hoffmann circa 1890. A dark American bison stands beneath a tree on the right, a wildebeest strides across the center, and a pair of zebu, a gazelle, a klipspringer and a musk deer complete the tropical landscape.

The sheet is lettered 1. Abtheilung and Säugethiere 15. Blatt at the head, and every animal is numbered and named beneath the image in German Fraktur with its Latin name, here Moschusthier, Klippspringer, Gazelle, Gnu, Bison and Zebu. The wildebeest is named Gnu, Catoblepas Gnu, and the American bison is shown with its heavy mane, both favorites with collectors of big game subjects.

Carl Friedrich August Kolb designed his Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere as an Anschauungs Unterricht für Schule und Haus, an object lesson for school and home, and the title page of this second edition announces 123 colored figures on 18 double folio plates together with 63 woodcuts in the text. The publisher was the Hoffmann'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung of Wilhelm Nübling in Stuttgart, and the plates were printed by color lithography, a process that allowed German publishers of the later nineteenth century to issue large, bright teaching images at a price schools and families could afford. Kolb arranged the mammals in systematic order across the series, so each sheet brings together related animals from several continents in a single imagined landscape. The bison was in steep decline in North America when this plate was printed, which lends it additional interest.

With its broad double page format and lively color, this chromolithograph suits a study, a library, a child's room or a natural history wall, and it can be grouped with other plates from the same series to build a set.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a faint center fold as issued and minor spotting and soiling in the margins; the image is clean.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.