Hoopoe, Roller and Crossbills, Antique Bertuch Print, Vienna, circa 1805

This antique hoopoe print shows the hoopoe with its raised crest together with the European roller, two crossbills and the nightingale, on an original hand colored plate from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch headed Voegel XXXII.

Bertuch grouped these birds as remarkable native birds. The hoopoe takes the center with its fanned, black tipped crest and barred wings, below it the roller shows its turquoise, blue and chestnut plumage, and to either side stand a red and a greenish yellow crossbill with their crossed mandibles. At the top a modest brown nightingale reminds the reader that the finest singer is often the plainest bird, a typical touch of the Bilderbuch's teaching style.

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 birds, which Bertuch treated as one of the richest subject classes of the whole work. The small engraved mark V.B.23 places the sheet in volume 5 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 and a few small stains beside figure 4 and in the lower margin; the image is otherwise clean.

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