WILHELM - MACKEREL - SEA FISHING engraving 1802

This very beautiful rare copper fishing engraving with original hand colouring, based on the fishes of Bloch's great work, is from Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm’s "Unterhaltungen aus der Naturgeschichte. De Fische" - Discourses: entertainments on natural history, Fishes, Germany in 1812.

Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm (1758 – 1811) was a Protestant pastor and natural history writer, and the son of Christian Art Wilhelm, an art dealer and publisher in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany.

These engravings are from the fish and fishing section of Wilhelm’s monumental 25 volume work on Natural History. Published from 1777 through to the 1800s, with a total of 1469 exquisite illustrations by the renowned engravers of Augsburg’s famous print empire, once known as the European Image Factory.

These wonderful small prints look superb framed in sets of two, three or four.