Isn’t he lovely? This vintage antelope drawing from 1822. He’s part of a full-color, hand-painted bookplate from a dictionary on natural history. Exploring the books in this set was like unwrapping Christmas presents. There was no way of knowing what plants and animals were honored with a drawing and add in the fact that the work is in French, I had no idea if I would see an ‘a’ animal like an antelope or a parrot in the middle of the volume with the French words that begin with the letter A.
This decidedly male antelope looks as if he has a feminine side. Look at those beautiful brown eyes and eyelashes. The best way I can think of to describe his coloring is to say his entire underside is white and the back of his neck, his back and the sides of his legs are a reddish-brown color. He is standing on a patch of green grass and looking off into the distance.
To save a bit on bandwidth and share the best version of this vintage animal drawing that I can, this page shows a smaller-scale version. Just click on the image itself if you would like to download the larger original version.
This image is copyright free and in the public domain anywhere that extends copyrights 70 years after death or at least 120 years after publication when the original illustrator is unknown.
