Two Grasses with Flower Details, Antique Bertuch Print, circa 1818

This antique botanical print comes from the Vienna edition of Bertuch's Bilderbuch and shows two grasses in careful botanical detail under the heading Pflanzen CLVIII, with the Vienna mark XVIII.B.49. The particular species are not yet established and are described here from what the plate shows.

On the left is a tufted grass with a loose, purplish flowering panicle and creeping roots, and on the right a taller grass with a narrow spike. Around them the engraver has placed a dozen enlarged details of florets, stamens and seeds, lettered for the text, in the manner of the later Bilderbuch volumes, which became more scientific under Carl Bertuch. The companion text that names the grasses is not present.

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 XVIII.B.49. Vienna volume XVIII follows Weimar volume IX, which appeared in 1816, 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 light toning, faint show through from the reverse and some wear at the right edge; the image is clean.

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