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.
Shining Sunbeam
$185
Castelnau’s Sunbeam
$185
Guerin’s Helmetcrest
$185
Linden’s Helmetcrest
$185
Columbian Thornbill
$185
Stanley’s Thornbill
$185
Southern Thornbill
$185
Herran’s Thornbill
$185
Red-capped Thornbill
$185
Thornbill
$185
Whittip
$185
Coppery Tail
$185
Brassy Tail
$185
Purple Tail
$185
Primoli’s Hummingbird
$185
Ryrian Tail
$185
Violet Tail
$185
Purple-throated Adelomya
$185
Black-eared Adelomyia
$185
Spotted Adelomyia
$185
Purple-tailed Avocet
$185
Fiery-tailed Avocet
$185
Blossom Crown
$185
Chestnut-bellied Adelomyia
$185
Ruby and Topaz
$185
Blue-Crest
$185
Green and Blue Crest
$185
Gilt-Crest
$185
De Lalande’s Plover-crest
$185
Loddiges’ Plover-crest
$185
Guimet’s Flutterer
$185
Abeille’s Flutterer
$185
Sun Gem
$185
Cayenne Fairy
$185
Brazilian Fairy
$185
Green-throated Fairy
$185
Purple-crowned Fairy
$185
Columbian Fairy
$185
Geoffroy’s Wedge-Bill
$185
Masked Wedge-Bill
$185
White-throated Wedge-Bill
$185
Natterer’s Vizor-bearer
$185
Hooded Vizor-bearer
$185
Brazilian Violet-Ear
$185
Columbian Violet-Ear
$185
Bolivian Violet-Ear
$185
Chequered Violet-Ear
$185
Mexican Violet-Ear
$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.