Gibbon and Monkeys, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1805

This antique monkey print shows three primates, a long armed ape that is probably a gibbon and two monkeys, on an original hand colored plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Vierfuessige Thiere LXV.

The pale ape at lower left stands upright with very long arms and no tail, the characteristic build of a gibbon. Beside it sits a gray monkey with a white ruff round its dark face and a long tail curled on the ground, and above them a dark monkey with reddish patches clambers up a broken tree trunk. The names given in Bertuch's text have not yet been confirmed for this plate, but the lively, expressive poses make it an appealing primate study.

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 quadrupeds, the four footed animals that open the natural history sections of the work. The small engraved mark VIII.B.33 places the sheet in volume 8 of the Vienna edition, one of the volumes issued in Vienna in the first years of the nineteenth century.

It is a copperplate engraving, colored by hand with watercolor in the manner of the Weimar original. The plate is signed by Jacob Xaver Schmuzer, one of the Viennese engravers who worked on this edition. 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 light toning, a few spots and small chips at the left edge clear of the image; the figures are clean and strong.

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