Antique Deer Print with Elk, Reindeer and Red Deer Stag, Kolb, circa 1890

This antique natural history print shows a red deer stag and hind, a fallow deer, roe deer, a reindeer and an elk or moose, an original plate from C. F. A. Kolb's Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere, published in Stuttgart by Hoffmann circa 1890. A great palmate antlered elk strides through a forest clearing, a red deer stag and hind stand to the right, and a reindeer, roe deer and a fallow deer complete the scene.

The sheet is lettered 1. Abtheilung and Säugethiere 13. Blatt at the head, and every animal is numbered and named beneath the image in German Fraktur with its Latin name, here Edelhirsch, Damhirsch, Reh, Rennthier and Elen. The elk is named Elen, Cervus alces, and its spreading antlers make the plate a natural choice for a hunting or country themed interior.

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. Deer plates have a long tradition in German hunting and country house interiors.

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 a center fold as issued, some brown staining in the upper right margin and a few small spots near the upper corners of the image.

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