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
Steere’s Broadbill
$185
Red-eyed Vireo
$350
Darwin’s Pucras Pheasant
$225
Duvaucel’s Trogon
$185
Turkey Buzzard
$725
Elliot’s Pheasant
$225
Malacca Trogon
$185
White-breasted Black-capped Nuthatch
$475
Generec characters I
$225
Hodgson’s Trogon
$185
Yellow Rump Warbler
$350
Generic Characters II
$225
Diard’s Trogon
$185
Tennessee Warbler
$350
Blackshouldered Peafowl
$225
Mountain Trogon
$185
Black-throated Blue Warbler
$350
Javan Peafowl
$225
Reinwardt’s Trogon
$185
American Crow
$725
Common Polyplectron
$225
Macklot’s Trogon
$185
Rusty Grakle
$475
Iris Polyplectron
$225
Kasumba Trogon
$185
American Swift
$350
Germain’s Polyplectron
$225
Fasciated Trogon
$185
Cardinal Grosbeak
$350
Napoleon’s Polyplectron
$225
Rosy-breasted Trogon
$185
Carolina Titmouse
$350
Sumatran Polyplectron
$225
Green Cochoa
$185
Brasilian Caracara Eagle
$725
Gray’s Argus Pheasant
$225
Purple Cochoa
$185
Zenaida Dove
$475
Ocellated Argus Pheasant. Many-spotted Argus Pheasant.
$225
Grey-throated Pericrocotus
$185
Palm Warbler
$350
Hodgson’s Eared Pheasant
$225
Canton Pericrocotus
$185
Tawny Thrush
$350
Drouyn’s Eared Pheasant
$225
Yellow-throated Pericrocotus
$185
Bachmans Finch
$350
Mantchurian Eared Pheasant
$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.