Giant Squirrel of the Malabar Coast, Antique Sonnerat Engraving, 1806

This original antique copper engraving, Plate 93 from Sonnerat's Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, shows the giant squirrel of the Malabar Coast, on a branch with its very long tail curved behind it. Beneath the image the sheet is lettered Le Grand Écureuil de la Côte de Malabar., with P. Sonnerat pinx. at the lower left and Desmoulins sculp. at the lower right, and the plate number 93 at the upper right.

The sheet comes from the Collection de planches pour servir au Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, the plate volume issued in Paris by Dentu, Imprimeur-Libraire of the quai des Augustins, in 1806. The plates were engraved on copper after drawings Pierre Sonnerat made in the field between 1774 and 1781, while he served the French crown as a naval commissary at Yanam and Pondicherry and traveled on from India to China, Malacca, Madagascar and the Cape of Good Hope. It is an original copperplate engraving, printed from the intaglio plate onto laid paper. The engraved plate number stands at the upper right, the artist and engraver credits run along the foot of the image and the caption is lettered beneath. The sheet is uncolored, as the plate volume was issued.

The mammal plates are the part of the volume that natural history collectors pursue. Several of the animals Sonnerat drew were new to European science when the book appeared, and the Madagascar sheets in particular are among the earliest printed images of their subjects. Pierre Sonnerat, born in Lyon in about 1748 and dead in Paris in 1814, was the nephew and private secretary of Pierre Poivre, the colonial administrator who broke the Dutch monopoly on the spice trade. Sonnerat traveled in the Philippines and the Moluccas, in Mauritius and Reunion, and then through India, China, Malacca, Madagascar and the Cape. He drew what he saw, which is why the plates have a directness that engravings worked up in Paris from other men's notes rarely have.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along all four edges. Scattered light foxing in the margin. Slight wear at the bottom left and top left corners.

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