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.
Godin’s Puff-leg
$185
D’Orbigny’s Puff-leg
$185
Derby’s Puff-leg
$185
Metallic Puff-leg
$185
Scaly Puff-leg
$185
Hoary Puff-leg
$185
Aurelia’s Puff-leg
$185
Black-billed Hill Toucan
$185
Black-throated Groove-bill
$185
Blue-banded Groove-bill
$185
Blue-throated Groove-bill, Supplement, page 101
$185
Chestnut-billed Groove-bill
$185
Citron-breasted Toucan
$185
Double-banded Araçari
$185
Doubtful Toucan
$185
Duchess of Leuchtenberg’s Araçari
$185
Gould’s Toucanet
$185
Hooded Hill Toucan
$185
Inca Toucan
$185
Laminated Hill Toucan
$185
Prince Maximilian’s Araçari
$185
Red-rumped Araçari
$185
Short-billed Toucan
$185
Sturm’s Araçari
$185
White-banded Groove-bill
$185
Yellow-billed Araçari
$185
Culminated Toucan
$185
Cuvier’s Toucan
$185
Red-Billed Toucan
$185
Lemon-Rumped Toucan
$185
Osculant Toucan
$185
Toco Toucan
$185
Sharp-billed Toucan
$185
Swainson’s Toucan
$185
Sulphur and White Breasted Toucan
$185
Ariel Toucan
$185
Red-Breasted Toucan
$185
Cayenne Aracari
$185
Chestnut-Eared Aracari
$185
Royal Aracari
$185
Many-Banded Aracari
$185
Double-collared Aracari
$185
Banded Aracari
$185
Green Aracari
$185
Humboldt’s Aracari
$185
Lettered Aracari
$185
Spotted Bill Aracari
$185
Natterers Aracari
$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.