Country Woman and Donkey going to Valenciennes, Antique Print, 1817

An original antique engraving, colored by hand, from Miss Semple's The Costume of the Netherlands, lettered "Country Woman going to Valenciennes". A countrywoman stands on the road leaning on a long staff and looking back over her shoulder, beside a shaggy brown donkey with a bridle and a gray sack slung across its back. She wears a checked headscarf over a white cap, a red jacket with a full basque, a long blue gray apron, a full yellow skirt and wooden sabots. Beyond the bushes at the left rises a town gate with two pointed towers and an arched entry, with houses beside it.

The caption is engraved in script below the image as "Country Woman going to 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.