Gardener's Wife of Rotterdam with Produce, Antique Print, 1817

An original antique hand colored engraving after Miss Semple, lettered "Gardener's Wife of Rotterdam.", from The Costume of the Netherlands published by Rudolph Ackermann in London in 1817. She is seen from behind under a very large flat straw hat, a pale blue yoke across her shoulders from which hang two big checkered wicker baskets. She wears a cream jacket patterned in pink, a long dark blue overskirt and a pale blue petticoat panel printed with white flowers, and she steadies the baskets by their handles. The baskets are heaped with green leaves, round pale cabbages, red flowers or fruit and yellow green melons.

The engraved caption below the image reads "Gardener's Wife of Rotterdam." and beneath it runs the imprint "Published Jan.y 1, 1817, at R. Ackermann's, 101 Strand.". The plate carries no engraver's signature, and the drawings for the whole series are credited on the title page to Miss Semple.

The plate belongs to The Costume of the Netherlands, published in London in 1817 by Rudolph Ackermann at his Repository of Arts, 101 Strand. The title page announces thirty colored engravings after drawings from nature by Miss Semple, with descriptions in English and French, and the plates carry imprints dated in the course of 1817. Each figure or group is set on a small washed patch of ground against the open paper, with the caption engraved in a copperplate script below. Ackermann (1764 to 1834), a German born publisher and print seller working in London, issued many illustrated books with hand colored plates, as well as the periodical The Repository of Arts.

A single plate suits a narrow frame with a generous mat, and several plates from the series hang well together as a group of Dutch street and household scenes.

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