Burying Ground Keeper's Wife near Valenciennes, Antique Print, 1817

An original antique engraving, colored by hand, from Miss Semple's The Costume of the Netherlands, lettered "Wife of the Keeper of the Burying Ground near Valenciennes". An old woman in a white frilled cap stands turned toward the viewer, wrapped in a long cream cloak that falls well below her hips, with a dark round pot held beneath it. Below the cloak she wears a dull rose skirt, white stockings and wooden sabots with pointed toes. Behind her runs a long plain wall with an iron gate, presumably the entrance to the burying ground of the caption, and a few small shrubs grow at its foot. A grassy mound fills the foreground.

The caption is engraved in script below the image as "Wife of the Keeper of the Burying Ground near Valenciennes", and beneath it is the publisher's imprint "Published Jan.y 1-1817, at R. Ackermann's, 101 Strand." No artist's or engraver's name is lettered on the plate; the drawings for the series are credited to Miss Semple on the title of the work.

The plate belongs to The Costume of the Netherlands, published in 1817 at Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts, 101 Strand, London. The title of the work describes it as displayed in thirty colored engravings after drawings from nature by Miss Semple, with descriptions in English and French. Its figures cover the Dutch provinces, Flanders and Brabant, and the French border country around Valenciennes, each shown in everyday working or market dress rather than in formal portraiture. Ackermann issued many of the best known illustrated books of Regency London, and the plates of this work were colored by hand after printing.

The figure sits well in a simple narrow frame with a wide mount, and plates from the same work make a coherent group on one wall.

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