Tanagers and Java Sparrow Songbirds, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1805

This antique bird print from Bertuch's Bilderbuch shows five brightly colored small songbirds, including the Java sparrow. The heading reads Vögel LXXIII and the Vienna mark X.B.31 is engraved at lower right.

Figure 5 is the Java sparrow, gray with a black head, white cheek and heavy pink bill, a popular cage bird then as now. The other figures include a black bird with an orange head and breast, a pale blue gray bird, a green headed bird with a long orange stripe and a multicolored tail, and a rufous and black bird, all of the tanager and finch type of the tropics. The individual species other than the Java sparrow are not named here, as the companion text is not present. The strong coloring makes this one of the livelier bird plates in the series.

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 published by Anton Pichler as the Bilderbuch zum Nutzen und Vergnuegen der Jugend, with text in German and French. 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 X.B.31. Vienna volume X follows Weimar volume V, which appeared in 1805, 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 bird plate like this suits a study, library or hallway, and several sheets from the Bilderbuch hang well together in a matching row. For a collector of ornithological prints it is an affordable and characterful example of early nineteenth century natural history teaching.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning and minor edge wear; the image is clean, bright and well preserved.

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