Chervil, Parsley and Celeriac Kitchen Herbs, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1802

This antique botanical print from Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows three familiar kitchen plants of the carrot family, chervil, parsley and celery with its swollen celeriac root. The heading reads Pflanzen XXVII and the Vienna volume mark III.B.20 appears in the lower right corner.

Figure 1 shows a finely cut, lacy leaved plant with a slender white root, read here as chervil. Figure 2 gives parsley with its flat umbel of flowers and a pale tapering root. Figure 3 is celery, with its tall stem, open umbel and a large knobbly celeriac root drawn in detail, together with a cut section and a slice of the stalk marked 3.a to 3.d. The vegetable plates of the Bilderbuch were meant to link the garden and the table, and this one shows the root and leaf of each plant so that children could recognise them at market as well as in flower.

Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747 to 1822) began his Bilderbuch fuer Kinder in Weimar in 1790 as a picture encyclopaedia for young readers, and over four decades it grew to almost 1,200 plates on plants, animals, peoples, antiquities and the sciences. Its success led to other editions, and this sheet comes from the Vienna edition published by Anton Pichler as the Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend, with text in German and French. The Vienna plates were newly engraved after the Weimar originals, keep the Weimar subject numbering in a heading in German, Latin and French, and carry a volume and plate number in the lower margin, here the mark III.B.20. Vienna volume III follows Weimar volume II, which appeared in 1795 to 1796, so this plate was published no earlier than that. The small initials J.X.S. in the lower margin are those of the Viennese engraver Jacob Xaver Schmuzer. The plate is a copper engraving with original hand color, as the Vienna volumes were issued colored.

A plate like this suits a kitchen, study or garden room, and it hangs well in a group with other Bertuch botanical sheets of the same size. For a collector it is also a neat example of how the Bilderbuch traveled beyond Weimar in the years around 1800.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with even toning and faint show through of text from the reverse; the image is otherwise clean.

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