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
MacGregor’s Niltava
$185
Ground Dove
$475
Shaw’s Pheasant
$225
Jericho Sun-bird
$185
American Golden crested Wren
$350
Common Pheasant
$225
Ceylonese Sun-bird
$185
Mangrove Humming Bird
$350
Yark and Pheasant
$225
Penang Sun-bird
$185
Bachman’s Warbler
$350
Mongolian Pheasant
$225
Mrs. Gould’s Sun-bird
$185
Pinnated Grouse
$725
Ring-necked Pheasant
$225
Black-breasted Sun-bird
$185
Boat-tailed Grackle
$475
Formosan Pheasant
$225
Fiery-tailed Sun-bird
$185
Tree Sparrow
$350
Ringless Chinese Pheasant
$225
Goulpourah Sun-bird
$185
Snow Bunting
$350
Greenback Golden Pheasant
$225
Vigors’ Sun-bird
$185
Yellow bellied Woodpecker
$350
Japanese Pheasant
$225
Nepaulese Sun-bird
$185
Willow Grouse, or large Ptarmigan
$725
Wallich’s Pheasant
$225
Asiatic Sun-bird
$185
Great American Shrike
$475
Reeves’s Pheasant
$225
Loten’s Sun-bird
$185
Lincoln Finch
$350
Sommering’s Pheasant
$225
Plain Zosterops
$185
Canadian Titmouse
$350
Phasianus Soemmerringi var. Scintillans
$225
Chestnut-sided Zosterops
$185
Ruby crowned Wren
$350
Lady Amherst’s Pheasant
$225
Red-collared Dicaeum
$185
Labrador Falcon
$725
Golden Pheasant
$225
Yellow-throated Dicaeum
$185
American Crossbill
$475
Black-throated Golden 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.