Antique Sperm Whale Print with Porpoise and Seals, Kolb Mammals, circa 1890

This antique natural history print shows a sperm whale, a harbor porpoise and harbor seals, an original plate from C. F. A. Kolb's Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere, published in Stuttgart by Hoffmann circa 1890. A large sperm whale with open jaw swims across the center, another whale spouts in the distance below high cliffs, a porpoise swims in the foreground and two seals rest on a rock to the right.

The sheet is lettered 1. Abtheilung and Säugethiere 18. Blatt at the head, and every animal is numbered and named beneath the image in German Fraktur with its Latin name, here Meerschwein, Potwallfisch and Seehund. The sperm whale is labeled Potwallfisch, Physeter macrocephalus, and the sweeping sea and cliffs give the sheet an attractive coastal atmosphere.

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. This is the final plate of the series, closing Kolb's survey of the mammals with the whales and seals.

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 and pale stains in the margins; the image is clean.

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