Antique Elephant and Rhinoceros Print with Tapir, Kolb Mammals, circa 1890

This antique natural history print shows an Indian elephant, an African rhinoceros and a Malayan tapir, an original plate from C. F. A. Kolb's Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere, published in Stuttgart by Hoffmann circa 1890. An Asian elephant with a tusk feeds among tall grasses on the left, a two horned rhinoceros faces it at the center, and a black and white tapir walks along a slope behind.

The sheet is lettered 1. Abtheilung and Säugethiere 9. Blatt at the head, and every animal is numbered and named beneath the image in German Fraktur with its Latin name, here Indischer Elephant, Afrikanisches Nashorn and Indischer Tapir. The elephant is labeled Indischer Elephant and the tapir Indischer Tapir, while the rhinoceros is named Afrikanisches Nashorn with the Latin Rhinoceros africanus.

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 large scale of the three animals gives this plate a bold, almost monumental presence on the wall.

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 a few small spots in the margins; the image is clean.

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