Woman of Brabant Resting with Staff and Bundle, Antique Ackermann Print, 1817

An original antique engraving, colored by hand, from Miss Semple's The Costume of the Netherlands, lettered "Woman of Brabant". A young woman sits on a grassy bank before a feathery tree, cutting something small in her left hand with a knife held in her right. She wears a deep straw bonnet, a white kerchief with a pink pattern, a brown jacket, a long buff apron and a pale blue skirt. A long plain wooden staff leans against the bank beside her, and at its foot lies a large bundle tied up in a white cloth. The ground in front is open and sandy, with low rocks and plants along the lower edge.

The caption is engraved in script below the image as "Woman of Brabant", and beneath it is the publisher's imprint "Publish'd 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.