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
Tragopan Hastingsii
$185
Wintertaling (fem)
$185
Henslow’s Sparrow
$350
Richardson’s Grouse
$225
Phasianus Albo-Cristatus
$185
Nest Blauwe Kwak
$185
Winter Hawk
$725
Spruce Grouse
$225
Phasianus Albo-Cristatus
$185
Kokmeeuw (mas)
$185
Swallow-tailed Hawk
$475
Franklin’s Grouse
$225
Phasianus Staceii
$185
Kokmeeuw (fem), Nest
$185
Wood Thrush
$350
Hartlaub’s Spruce Grouse
$225
Phainus Pucrasia
$185
Vlamsijs
$185
Indigo Bird
$350
The Black Grouse
$225
Phainus Pucrasia
$185
Fazant (mas)
$185
Le Petit Caporal
$350
Cock of the Plains
$225
Perdix Chukar
$185
Fazant (fem)
$185
Virginian Partridge
$725
Sharp-Talled Grouse
$225
Otis Nigriceps
$185
Tapuit
$185
Belted Kingfisher
$475
Artic Sharp-Tail Grouse
$225
Otis Himalayanus
$185
Moerhoen (mas)
$185
Great Carolina Wren
$350
Pinnated Grouse, Adults and Young
$225
Otis Himalayanus
$185
Moerhoen (fem)
$185
Tyrant Flycatcher
$350
Willow Grouse, Summer Plumage, Adults and Young
$225
Otis Himalayanus
$185
Fuut
$185
Prairie Titlark
$350
Willow Grouse, Winter Plumage, In Change
$225
Totanus Glotoides
$185
Lepelaar
$185
Fish Hawk or Osprey
$725
Red Grouse, Adults and Young
$225
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.