The Artist:
Johann Christian Kröner (1838–1911) was a German painter renowned for his exceptional mastery of animal and landscape painting in the 19th century. Born in Rinteln, Germany, he devoted himself entirely to art from 1861 onward and settled in Düsseldorf, where he became part of the Düsseldorf School of painting, known for its realism and deep attachment to nature.

Unlike many artists of his time, Kröner did not treat animals as mere decorative subjects. A hunter and a keen observer of the living world, he carefully studied animal behavior, posture, and natural environments in order to depict them with remarkable accuracy and rare authenticity. His works present wildlife in its true setting, without idealisation or excessive dramatisation.

Recognized during his lifetime, exhibited across Europe, and honored with official distinctions, Kröner left a lasting mark on animal painting through his profound respect for the wild world and his ability to convey the silent presence of nature.
 (h/t @Curious.e.y.e.)

The Plates & Technique:
Wood engraving is a printmaking technique in which an artist cuts an image into the endgrain block of very hard wood. Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. To carve a woodblock, you had to cut away everything but the part you wanted to print. The areas of the design that show ink when printed are those left uncut on the surface of the wood block. By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the matrix and is printed by the intaglio method, where the ink fills the valleys, the removed areas. As a result of the relatively lower pressure used to print, the blocks for wood engravings deteriorate less quickly than the copper plates of engravings, and may have a distinctive white-on-black character. 

Thomas Bewick developed the wood engraving technique in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century. His work differed from earlier woodcuts in two key ways. First, rather than using woodcarving tools such as knives & gouges, Bewick used an engraver's burin (graver). With this, he could create thin delicate lines, often creating large dark areas in the composition. Second, wood engraving traditionally uses the wood's end grain—while the older technique used the softer side grain. The resulting increased hardness and durability facilitated fantastically detailed images. 

By the mid-19th century, many wood engravings rivaled copperplate engravings in their detail. A further innovation was the transfering of photographs carved by hand into the wood, known as 'Photoxylographs'. Before the advent of photolithography, newspapers used wood engravings to make photographic reproductions, where an artist "meticulously traced the photograph upon the surface of a block of boxwood or other suitable tree, then used a sharp tool to cut out the troughs (the white part of the photo) from the wood. The remaining lines for the black ink stayed 'type high.' A workman rolled or daubed a layer of ink over the incised surface, laid a sheet of paper on it, pressed it down with a roller, pulled the paper away from the sticky substance," and the result was a printed image.

A later advancement of this technique I've read about, was to apparently coat the wood block in emulsion, & expose the negative film directly onto the block, & carve it all by hand from there. 

Condition:
Excellent condition, nearly pristine as these go. Please peruse the 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 & handled, etc.  Please examine the photos & details carefully.

Text Page(s): This one comes without original text pages. I've included a scan of a cover-page from one of the volumes, it's for reference & not part of the listing.

Size: 10-1/2" x 13-3/4" approximately.

Combined Shipping:
Yes! Multiple prints can be combined into one 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, which I then will need to refund after. If you're assessed multiple shipping charges for one combined package, I will endeavor to refund any overage asap.

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