Banknote vignette showing a zebra 1819 - 1837

This Banknote vignette showing a zebra was made by Asher Brown Durand, sometime in the nineteenth century. It's an engraving, meaning that the image of the zebra was incised into a metal plate, inked, and then printed onto paper. Durand was one of the foremost engravers in the United States. In the early part of his career, he specialized in this exacting, laborious process. Look closely, and you can see the thousands of tiny lines that describe the animal's form. The technique was ideally suited to the printing of banknotes, and in fact, Durand was part of the company Durand, Perkins & Company that produced them. The intricacy of the engraving made the bills difficult to counterfeit. The zebra is a somewhat exotic choice of subject, but its stripes would have added another layer of complexity to the printing. Ultimately, Durand moved away from this commercial work to become a celebrated landscape painter. But this early training is a reminder that many artists have straddled the worlds of art and commerce, bringing exceptional skill to both.