Milk Woman of Valenciennes with Brass Milk Cans, Antique Ackermann Print, 1817

An original antique engraving, colored by hand, from Miss Semple's The Costume of the Netherlands, lettered "Milk Woman of Valenciennes". A young milk seller stands facing the viewer on a sandy road, two large brass milk cans with tall spouted necks hanging at her sides from curved carrying hooks, and a dark metal measure held in her hands. She wears a white frilled cap, a white kerchief, a red jacket checked in a darker red, a long white apron sprigged with small lilac flowers over a red skirt, pale stockings and wooden sabots. A low ridge of ground and a stony bank lie behind and to the right.

The caption is engraved in script below the image as "Milk Woman of 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.