Laborer near Valenciennes, Working Dress, Antique Ackermann Print, 1817

An original antique engraving, colored by hand, from Miss Semple's The Costume of the Netherlands, lettered "Laborer near Valenciennes". A young laborer stands turned to the left with a long handled spade over his left shoulder, in a broad brimmed gray hat, a white shirt with full sleeves, a long brown sleeveless waistcoat and brown breeches. A gray cloth hangs over his left arm. His legs are wrapped in loose gray stockings and he wears pale wooden sabots. Behind him a soft bush rises at the left and the ground stretches away to a flat horizon, with a patch of green grass in the right foreground.

The caption is engraved in script below the image as "Laborer near Valenciennes", and beneath it is the publisher's imprint "Published Jan.y 1-1817, at R. Ackermann's, 101 Strand." No artist's or engraver's name is lettered on the plate; the drawings for the series are credited to Miss Semple on the title of the work.

The plate belongs to The Costume of the Netherlands, published in 1817 at Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts, 101 Strand, London. The title of the work describes it as displayed in thirty colored engravings after drawings from nature by Miss Semple, with descriptions in English and French. Its figures cover the Dutch provinces, Flanders and Brabant, and the French border country around Valenciennes, each shown in everyday working or market dress rather than in formal portraiture. Ackermann issued many of the best known illustrated books of Regency London, and the plates of this work were colored by hand after printing.

The figure sits well in a simple narrow frame with a wide mount, and plates from the same work make a coherent group on one wall.

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