DESCRIPTION: A group of two antique copper-plate engraved pages containing scenes that show how mariners have exploited the aquatic environment for food or for the acquisition of wealth.
The upper print depicts a shore-based whale butchery and oil rendering location. In the foreground workers strip blubber from the dead whale lying in the shallows; a large fire burns nearby where the blubber would be boiled down to oil. Workers tend the fire and fill numerous wooden barrels with the whale oil, and at the end of the scene horse and wagon are shown to suggest the transfer of the oil barrels to another location.
The lower plate depicts a ships crew in a small rowboat firing upon a herd of walrus. While some of the crew fires their long guns other crew members use their oars to maintain the boats position and steady the rocking boat.
From G. T. Wilhelm's Encyclopedia of Natural History: Mankind. Augsburg, 1804. Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm (1758-1811) was a Bavarian clergyman and naturalist known as the German Buffon
PUBLICATION DATE: 1808
GEOGRAPHIC AREA: N/A
BODY OF WATER: N/A
CONDITION: Good.
Prints are generally clean inside the neatline with some minor marginal staining that will be covered when matted.
COLORING: Old hand coloring.
ENGRAVER:
SIZE: 6
" x
3 "
ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION: 0
PRICE: $150
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