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.
2,174 prints
Die americanische Meise mit gelber Kehle
$165
Tangara Septicolor
$165
Cerulean Warbler
$350
Celebes Pitta
$195
Buceros Cavatus
$185
L’Aracari à ceinture rouge dans ses extreme vielesse
$195
Gele Kwikstaart
$185
Die rosenrothe oder fleischfarbe Amsel des Altrovandi
$165
Momot Hoûtou
$165
Blue-green Warbler
$350
Red-Necked Pitta
$195
Coccothraustes Icterioides
$185
L’Aracari à double couleurs
$195
Zeezwaluw (fem)
$185
Graukopfiger Grünspecht
$165
Pie à Huppe Paillée
$165
Magnolia Warbler
$350
Crimson-Breasted Pitta
$195
Bucco Grandis
$185
Zeezwaluw (mas)
$185
Spatulé Ajarit
$165
Red-tailed Hawk
$725
Gray’s Pitta
$195
Picus Occipitalis
$185
Wulp
$185
Tyran Bem te Veol
$165
Chuckwills Widow
$475
Macklot’s Pitta
$195
Picus Squamatus
$185
Winterkoning
$185
Painted Finch
$350
Baud’s Pitta
$195
Picus Shorii
$185
Koolmees
$185
Rice Bird
$350
Rainbow Pitta
$195
Picus Hyperythrus
$185
Haverkneu
$185
Cuvier’s Kinglet
$350
Forsten’s Pitta
$195
Picus Mahrattenisis
$185
Koekoek
$185
Red-shouldered Hawk
$725
Black-Headed Pitta
$195
Picus Brunnifrons
$185
Witte Kwikstaart
$185
Loggerhead Shrike
$475
Muller’s Pitta
$195
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.