Five Frogs Including a Striped Frog, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1815

This antique frog print shows five frogs seen from above, including a small blue striped frog and a spotted brown frog, on an original hand colored plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Amphibien XXXI.

The upper row, lettered A, B and C, shows a brown frog with a pale saddle pattern, a spotted reddish frog and a tiny blue frog with dark stripes, and below them are a blue gray frog with a dark stripe down its back and a greenish frog with yellow spots on its flanks. The species named in Bertuch's text have not yet been confirmed for this sheet. The plate shows how carefully the colorists picked out the different patterns of each frog.

The plate comes from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch, published in Vienna under the title Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend. Its source is the celebrated Bilderbuch fuer Kinder, the picture book for children conceived and edited by Friedrich Justin Bertuch in Weimar, whose plates were engraved afresh by Viennese engravers for this edition. Most plates carry their subject class and number in German, Latin and French across the top, so that the work could teach languages as well as natural history. Here the heading belongs to the series of amphibians, a class in which Bertuch, following the naturalists of his day, grouped snakes, lizards, crocodiles, frogs and even seals. The small engraved mark XV.B.1? places the sheet in volume 15 of the Vienna edition, which corresponds to the eighth volume of the Weimar original, dated 1813, so this Vienna plate cannot be earlier than that.

It is a copperplate engraving, colored by hand with watercolor in the manner of the Weimar original. Bertuch drew his images from the best natural history books of his time, and the result is a lively, accessible record of how the natural world was understood around 1800. Single plates from the Bilderbuch are popular with collectors of antique natural history prints, and a group of related plates makes a handsome display in a study, library or hallway.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with even toning, faint show through from the reverse and a close trimmed lower margin; the figures are clean.

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