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
Rufescent Curlew
$185
Eared Grebe
$350
Sanguine Francolin
$185
Semipalmated Sandpiper
$350
Sclater’s Monal
$185
Dusky Albatros
$475
Shaw’s Pheasant
$185
American Scoter Duck
$350
Siamese Fireback
$185
Havell’s Tern
$350
Slate-coloured Partridge
$185
Marsh Tern
$350
Sommering’s Pheasant
$185
Common American Swan
$725
Sonnerat’s Jungle-fowl
$185
Violet-green Cormerant
$350
Sparkling Pheasant
$185
Californian Partridge
$350
Spoon-billed Sandpiper
$185
Golden-winged Warbler
$350
Swinhoe’s Fireback
$185
Brown Creeper, Californian Nuthatch
$350
Temminck’s Horned Pheasant
$185
Red-bellied Woodpecker
$725
Tibetan Snow-Partridge
$185
Audubon’s Woodpecker
$475
Vieillot’s Fireback
$185
American Ptarmigan, White-tailed Grous
$350
Western Horned Pheasant
$185
Little Tawny Thrush, Ptiliogony’s Townsendi, Canada Jay
$350
White-breasted Water-horn
$185
Prairie Starling
$350
Zic-Zac
$185
Brown Pelican
$725
Bonham’s Sand Partridge
$185
Rough-legged Falcon
$475
Asiatic Bush-Quail
$185
Plumed Partridge, Thick-legged Partridge
$350
Argoondah Bush-Quail
$185
Lazuli Finch, Crimson-necked Bull Finch, et al
$350
Chestnut-tailed Lobed Pheasant
$185
Columbian Humming Bird
$350
Bulwer’s Pheasant
$185
Californian Vulture
$725
Cheer
$185
White-legged Oyster Catcher. Slender-billed Oyster Catcher
$350
Chinese Crossoptilon
$185
Townsend’s Sandpiper
$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.