Bird prints
Bird plates by eight naturalists, from Audubon’s life-size The Birds of America to Gould’s hummingbirds, Elliot’s pheasants and Levaillant’s parrots, first published between the 1740s and the 1880s. Each print is a facsimile giclée made from the originals, at the size of the original sheet, in a numbered edition of 250.
Yellow-browed Warbler
$185
Fire-crested Wren
$185
Melodious Warbler
$185
Thrush-Warbler
$185
Reed-Warbler
$185
Marsh-Warbler
$185
Aquatic Warbler
$185
Savi’s Warbler
$185
Grasshopper Warbler
$185
Pied Wagtail
$185
White Wagtail
$185
Yellow Wagtail
$185
Grey-headed Wagtail
$185
Grey-capped Wagtail
$185
Grey Wagtail summer plumage
$185
Grey Wagtail winter plumage
$185
Richard’s Pipit
$185
Tawny Pipit
$185
Stock-Dove
$185
Rock-Pigeon
$185
Red Grouse
$185
Palla’s Sand-Grouse
$185
Great Bustard
$185
Common Crane
$185
Heron
$185
Buff-backed Heron
$185
Kentish Plover
$185
Green Sandpiper
$185
Moorhen
$185
Spotted Crake
$185
Grey Lag Goose
$185
Bean-Goose
$185
Pink-footed Goose
$185
White-fronted Goose
$185
Bernicle Goose
$185
Red-breasted Goose
$185
Brent Goose
$185
Bewick’s Swan
$185
Sheldrake
$185
Ruddy Sheldrake
$185
Widgeon
$185
Shoveller Duck
$185
Teal
$185
Garganey
$185
Gadwall
$185
Pochard
$185
Red-crested Duck
$185
Tufted Duck
$185
About bird prints
Our bird plates cover more than a century of printmaking, and the technique changes with the period. The oldest are copper engravings: Johann Michael Seligmann’s German versions of the birds of Mark Catesby and George Edwards, published in Nuremberg from 1749 (one of them shows a dodo beside a guinea pig), and Cornelius Nozeman’s Nederlandsche Vogelen, begun in 1770. Between 1801 and 1806 Jacques Barraband’s paintings of parrots and toucans for François Levaillant were engraved in stipple.
The largest sheets are Audubon’s: Robert Havell engraved and aquatinted The Birds of America in London between 1827 and 1838, opening with the Wild Turkey. Most of the other books are lithographs, among them those of John Gould, who worked with a team of artists, and the monographs of Daniel Giraud Elliot, drawn by Joseph Wolf, Joseph Smit and John Gerrard Keulemans. What is The Birds of America? tells how Audubon’s book was made.