Roulroul Crested Partridge of Malacca, Antique Bird Engraving, 1806

An original antique plate from Sonnerat's Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, numbered 113, showing the roulroul or crested partridge of Malacca standing in profile, the dense upright crest rising from the forehead. Beneath the image the sheet is lettered ROULOUL DE MALACCA., with P. Sonnerat pinx. at the lower left and Fessart sculp. at the lower right, and the plate number 113 at the upper right.

This plate belongs to the Collection de planches pour servir au Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, published in Paris by Dentu in 1806. It is the plate volume that accompanies Sonnerat's account of the years he spent in India, China, Malacca, Madagascar and the islands of the Indian Ocean as a naturalist and naval commissary in the service of France. It is an original copperplate engraving, printed from the intaglio plate onto laid paper. The engraved plate number stands at the upper right, the artist and engraver credits run along the foot of the image and the caption is lettered beneath. The sheet is uncolored, as the plate volume was issued.

The bird plates run for nearly thirty sheets through the middle of the volume and cover the Coromandel and Malabar coasts, Gingi and Pondicherry, Malacca, China, Madagascar and the Cape. Each bird is drawn at the full height of the plate against a plain ground, usually on a branch or a rock, with the plumage worked up line by line in the engraving. What Sonnerat produced was not a studio compilation. He was in India for seven years, based at Yanam and at Pondicherry, and he went on to Canton, to Malacca, to Madagascar and to the Cape of Good Hope. The drawings he brought back were engraved in Paris by Jean-Baptiste Marie Poisson, Jean-Jacques Avril, Desmoulins, Fessart and Milsan, among the better reproductive engravers working in the city at the end of the eighteenth century.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along all four edges. Scattered light foxing in the margin. Slight wear at the bottom right and top left corners.

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