~ Combined Shipping ~

Scarce 1849 Hand-Colored Steel-Plate Large-Paper Edition Engraving from:
 
DICTIONNAIRE
UNIVERSEL
D'HISTOIRE NATURELLE
DIRIGE
Par M. CHARLES D'ORBIGNY
ATLAS
ZOOLOGIE
 
QUADRUPÈDES, PRIMATES Pl. 6.A.
Cercopithecus griseus (Guenon Grivet)
[Grivet Monkey, Chlorocebus aethiops?]

This plate is a true treasure, an unfindable, untrimmed, Large-Paper edition, a magnificently hand-colored steel-plate engraving from among the most meticulous & exquisite Natural History works published in the age of engravings.

In all the stunning plates I've collected from this work over the years, I've never found any in this large format. Usually they are trimmed to small bookplates. I have 5 of these I'll be listing, of which this is one.

This must have been a super-deluxe set of these plates, not only are they on large sheets, but the hand-coloring appears to be extra-meticulously detailed to my eye.


About the Volumes:
This antique print comes from the Dictionnaire Universel d’Histoire Naturelle, published in Paris in 1849 and edited by the renowned French naturalist Charles d’Orbigny. Widely considered one of the most important illustrated encyclopedias of the 19th century, this monumental work featured detailed steel engravings hand-colored by skilled artisans.

The series spans a vast range of subjects including mammals, birds, marine life, insects, and plants, each identified by order, genus, and species in both Latin and French. These plates were originally issued without accompanying text and reflect a combination of scientific rigor and artistic excellence.

About the Artist:
Édouard Traviès de Villers (24 March 1809 – 18 November 1876) was a French watercolourist, lithographer and illustrator. He was among the finest natural history draughtsmen of the 19th century in France. Traviès regularly exhibited works at the Paris Salon between 1831 and 1866 and was primarily known for his paintings of natural history subjects, especially birds. His greatest work was Les oiseaux les plus remarquables par leurs formes et leurs couleurs (The most remarkable birds for their form and colour). Simultaneously published in London and Paris in 1857, Les oiseaux contains 79 hand-colored lithographic plates made from Traviès's original paintings.

About the Author:
Charles Henry Dessalines d'Orbigny (1806–1879) was a French botanist and geologist. He was the younger brother of French naturalist and South American explorer, Alcide d'Orbigny. At the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, d'Orbigny classified many of the flowering plant species returned to France from his brother's natural history collecting journeys through South America. 

Every part of these prints was made by hand: Hand drawn & engraved on Copper or steel which was hand-mined, smelted & rolled, printed onto handmade cotton rag paper, inked & colored with hand-ground pigments individually by hand, & they were usually hand sewn into handmade leather-bound books.

Condition:
Appears to be in virtually pristine condition for a 177-year-old engraving. The best shape I've ever seen one of these. The hand-coloring appears sharp & brilliant. The paper shows amost no age-toning & little antiquarian character. Appears to be a very clean plate indeed. Please peruse the detailed photos.

These prints are very old & may have minor imperfections expected with age, such as some typical age-toning of the paper, oxidation of the old original watercolors, spots, text-offsetting, artifacts from having been bound into a book, unique historical character such as light notations from their life as reference plates, etc. Please examine the photos & details carefully.

Text Page(s): This one comes without original text page(s).  I've included a scan of a title page from one of the editions for reference, it's not part of this listing

Size, dimensions of the frame: 12-1/4 x 9 inches approximately.
 
Combined Shipping:
Yes!  Multiple prints can be combine into one Priority Mail package. Larger prints may need to be shipped in tube. eBay should auto-combine your items if you put all of your selections into your shopping cart & check out all together as one order. If you purchase them individually, eBay charges shipping on each. If you're assessed multiple shipping charges for one combined package, I will endeavor to refund any overage asap

Thanks for Visiting!

Please note: The information I've included in this listing is based on my best research & observations as an enthusiast of these works, not a professional historian of antiquarian books & prints. I do like to offer some background information readily available to me but make no claims representations of total accuracy. Any corrections or further information you might offer would certainly appreciated! The scans in the images are my best efforts to accurately show the item. Antique prints & old paper are notoriously tricky to scan accurately. In my experience, scanners tend to be thrown off by the off-whites & gradations in age-toned paper. If the scanner produces a scan that's too dark or too brown, etc, I'll often try to reasonably color-correct to represent the print as accurately as possible. I'm not a professional in color-correcting images yet I try my best to show the print as close to the original as possible. I also find that different monitors show colors differently, & eBay's system can sometimes throw off the colors a bit in the uploaded JPEG images as they appear on their site.  Thank you!