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.
Arfak Cat-bird
$185
Barbet-like Cat-bird
$185
Black-naped Cat-bird
$185
Toothed-billed Bower-bird
$185
Queensland Bower-bird
$185
Large-frilled Bower-bird
$185
Gardener Bower-bird
$185
Orange-crested Bower-bird
$185
Golden Bird of Paradise
$185
Deceptive Oriole
$185
Arfak Drongo
$185
New-Ireland Drongo
$185
White-billed Wood-Shrike
$185
Fawnbreasted Wood-Shrike
$185
Rufous-and-Black Wood-Shrike
$185
Jobi-Island Wood Shrike
$185
Aru-Island Wood Shrike
$185
Saw-bill
$185
Spix’s Saw-bill
$185
Sickle Bill
$185
Condamine’s Sickle Bill
$185
Hairy Hermit (1)
$185
Mazeppa Hermit
$185
Allied Hermit (1)
$185
Lanceolate Hermit
$185
Black-tailed Hermit
$185
Dohrn’s Hermit
$185
Rucker’s Hermit
$185
Fraser’s Hermit
$185
White-tailed Barbed-throat
$185
Fawn-tailed Barbed-throat
$185
Sooty Barbed-throat
$185
Eurynome Hermit
$185
Cayenne Hermit
$185
Allied Hermit (2)
$185
Mexican Hermit
$185
Train-bearing Hermit
$185
De Filippi’s Hermit
$185
Hairy Hermit (2)
$185
D’Osery’s Hermit
$185
Pallid Hermit
$185
Bourcier’s Hermit
$185
Guy’s Hermit
$185
Yaraquian Hermit
$185
Pretre’s Hermit
$185
Sallé’s Hermit
$185
Middle-sized Hermit
$185
Longuemare’s Hermit
$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.