Norfolk Island Pine Branch and Cone, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1815

This antique botanical print from Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows a branch of the Norfolk Island pine, Araucaria heterophylla, with its cones. The heading reads Pflanzen CXLVIII and the Vienna mark XVI.B.20 is engraved at lower right.

A sweeping branch of scale leaved shoots fills the upper part of the plate, and below it are a small green cone and a large brown seed cone with its overlapping scales. The Weimar plate was copied from Ferdinand Bauer's botanical drawing in Aylmer Bourke Lambert's Description of the Genus Pinus of 1803, so this humble children's book passes on one of the finest botanical images of its time. The tree had been found on Norfolk Island by Cook's second voyage and was soon grown in Europe as a curiosity.

Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747 to 1822) began his Bilderbuch fuer Kinder in Weimar in 1790 as a picture encyclopaedia for young readers, and over four decades it grew to almost 1,200 plates on plants, animals, peoples, antiquities and the sciences. Its success led to other editions, and this sheet comes from the Vienna edition begun by Anton Pichler as the Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend, with text in German and French; Pichler issued the first ten volumes, and the later volumes, including this one, are believed to have been issued by B. Ph. Bauer in Vienna. The Vienna plates were newly engraved after the Weimar originals, keep the Weimar subject numbering in a heading in German, Latin and French, and carry a volume and plate number in the lower margin, here the mark XVI.B. 20. Vienna volume XVI follows Weimar volume VIII, which appeared in 1813, so this plate was published no earlier than that. The plate is a copper engraving with original hand color, as the Vienna volumes were issued colored.

A plate like this suits a kitchen, study or garden room, and it hangs well in a group with other Bertuch botanical sheets of the same size. For a collector it is also a neat example of how the Bilderbuch traveled beyond Weimar in the years around 1800.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with even toning and faint show through of text from the reverse; the image is clean and the color fresh.

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