Scarce 1836 CUVIER RÈGNE ANIMAL Engraving, Disciples Edition, MOLLUSQUES, Pl. 97

Description: Rare 1836 Hand-Colored Steel-Plate Stipple-Engraving from: Le Règne Animal distribué d'après son organisation, pour servir de base à l'histoire naturelle des animaux et d'introduction à l'anatomie comparée Mollusques Pl. 96. About the Volumes: The original Le Règne Animal (The Animal Kingdom), issued 1816-1829, is the most famous work of the French naturalist Baron Georges Cuvier. It set out to describe the natural structure of the whole of the animal kingdom based on comparative anatomy, and its natural history. Cuvier divided the animals into four embranchements, namely vertebrates, molluscs, articulated animals (arthropods and annelids), and zoophytes (cnidaria and other phyla).The 3rd Edition of Règne Animal of 1836—1849, known as 'The Disciples Edition' was completely reworked & vastly improved. It contained some of the most exquisite Natural History engravings ever made. These plates were completely new engravings, done in the 'Stipple' technique, which imparts a soft shading & modeling that traditional line engravings didn't. They were comparable to, & often exceeded in execution & accuracy, the nearly contemporaneous Charles D'Orbigny's Dictionnaire Universel d'Histoire Naturelle. It's from this exceedingly rare & sought-after set that this listed engraving comes.The drawing, compositions, accuracy, detail work in the stipple-engraving, the coloring 'A La poupee' (colored in the plate) & hand-finishing are exquisite. This is a truly remarkable, stunning, & very scarce plate. The Editors: The twelve "disciples" who contributed to the 3rd edition were Jean Victor Audouin (insects), Gerard Paul Deshayes (molluscs), Alcide d'Orbigny (birds), Antoine Louis Dugès (arachnids), Georges Louis Duvernoy (reptiles), Charles Léopold Laurillard (mammals in part), Henri Milne Edwards (crustaceans, annelids, zoophytes, and mammals in part), Francois Desire Roulin (mammals in part), Achille Valenciennes (fishes), Louis Michel François Doyère (insects), Charles Émile Blanchard (insects, zoophytes) and Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau (annelids, arachnids etc.).The work was illustrated with tables and plates (at the end of Volume IV) covering only some of the species mentioned. A much larger set of illustrations, said by Cuvier to be "as accurate as they were elegant" was published by the entomologist Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville in his Iconographie du Règne Animal de G. Cuvier, the nine volumes appearing between 1829 and 1844. The 448 quarto plates by Christophe Annedouche, Canu, Eugène Giraud, Lagesse, Lebrun, Vittore Pedretti, Plée and Smith illustrated some 6200 animals.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 excellent condition for a centuries-old engraving. The hand-coloring appears to remain sharp & brilliant as the day it was painted. Typical slight age-toning & character for a print this old. Please peruse the detailed photos. Printed on heavy, creamy paper with strong plate-marks.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, etc. Please examine the photos & details carefully.Text Page(s): This one comes without original text page(s).About this gorgeous creature:Hippopus hippopus, also known as the Horse Hoof clam and Strawberry clam, is a species of giant clam in the Subfamily Tridacninae and the genus Hippopus.H. hippopus is found in tropical waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is commonly found on the coast of Indonesia and Palau. Its range extends as far as India in the Indian Ocean, and Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean.Hippopus is a delicacy in many Southeast Asian countries.Due to being in a shallow water environment, this species is often harvested for its beautiful shell and its meat, consumed in several Pacific and Asian countries. However, its extremely slow growth and reproduction makes such harvesting unsustainable: stocks can take several decades to recover after just one harvest. Hence, the species is considered overfished in many countries, and may even be extinct in several of them.Size: 10-1/2" x 6-1/2" inches approximately. Shipping: Multiple prints combine into one USPS Flat-Rate envelope. If you'd like to combine & need more time to choose, please send a message & we'll do our best to oblige. If you're assessed multiple shipping for one combined package, we'll endeavor to refund any overage asap. Thanks for Visiting!

Price: 49 USD

Location: Great Barrington, Massachusetts

End Time: 2024-09-21T23:51:27.000Z

Shipping Cost: 8.95 USD