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.
Indian Roller
$185
Burmesec Roller
$185
Temminck’s Roller
$185
Javan Eurylaime
$185
Hooded Eurylaime
$185
Great-billed Eurylaime
$185
Allied Eurylaime
$185
Great Eurylaime
$185
Lunated Eurylaime
$185
Red-backed Eurylaime
$185
Dalhousie’s Eurylaime
$185
Steere’s Broadbill
$185
Duvaucel’s Trogon
$185
Malacca Trogon
$185
Hodgson’s Trogon
$185
Diard’s Trogon
$185
Mountain Trogon
$185
Reinwardt’s Trogon
$185
Macklot’s Trogon
$185
Kasumba Trogon
$185
Fasciated Trogon
$185
Rosy-breasted Trogon
$185
Green Cochoa
$185
Purple Cochoa
$185
Grey-throated Pericrocotus
$185
Canton Pericrocotus
$185
Yellow-throated Pericrocotus
$185
Cawnpore Pericrocotus
$185
Great Pericrocotus
$185
Orange Pericrocotus
$185
Little Pericrocotus
$185
Rosy Pericrocotus
$185
Grey Pericrocotus
$185
Philippine-Island Thickhead
$185
Grey-headed Pteruthius
$185
Himalayan Pteruthius
$185
Rufous-bellied Pteruthius
$185
Black-eared Allotrius
$185
Yellow-green Allotrius
$185
Paradise Flycatcher
$185
Ince’s Paradise Flycatcher
$185
Grand Niltava
$185
Sundara Niltava
$185
MacGregor’s Niltava
$185
Jericho Sun-bird
$185
Ceylonese Sun-bird
$185
Penang Sun-bird
$185
Mrs. Gould’s Sun-bird
$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.