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
Amethystine Cuckoo
$185
Marsh Hawk
$725
Branded Pigeon
$185
American Magpie
$475
Whistling Sand-Grouse
$185
Pine Grosbeak
$350
Banded Sand-Grouse
$185
Arkansaw Flycatcher
$350
Ceylon Spur-Fowl
$185
Winter Wren
$350
Bearded Partridge
$185
Long-tailed, or Dusky Grouse
$725
Black-bellied Tern
$185
Yellow billed Magpie
$475
Black-winged Pratincole
$185
Bohemian Chatterer
$350
Chinese Jacana
$185
White-winged Crossbill
$350
Chinese Pucras Pheasant
$185
Lapland Long-spur
$350
Chinese Quail
$185
Iceland, or Jer Falcon
$725
Chinese Ring-necked Pheasant
$185
Band-tailed Pigeon
$475
Cinereous Pratincole
$185
Rock Grous
$350
Coromandel Quail
$185
Mountain Mocking Bird
$350
Darwin’s Pucras Pheasant
$185
American Water Ouzel
$350
De l’Huys’ Monal
$185
Cock of the Plains
$725
Dr. Cabot’s Horned Pheasant
$185
Common Buzzard
$475
Elliot’s Pheasant
$185
Evening Grosbeak
$350
Fasciated Hemipode
$185
Sharp-skinned Hawk
$350
Geoffroy’s Francolin
$185
Lesser Red-Poll
$350
Golden Pheasant
$185
Trumpeter Swan (young)
$725
Hey’s Sand Partridge
$185
Scolpaceus Courlan
$350
Himalayan Pucras Pheasant
$185
Hawk Owl
$350
Himalayan Snow-Partridge
$185
Ruff-necked Hummingbird
$350
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.