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
Chestnut-Eared Aracari
$185
Royal Aracari
$185
Many-Banded Aracari
$185
Double-collared Aracari
$185
Banded Aracari
$185
Green Aracari
$185
Humboldt’s Aracari
$185
Lettered Aracari
$185
Spotted Bill Aracari
$185
Natterers Aracari
$185
Reinwardts Aracari
$185
Koulik Aracari
$185
Langdorfs Aracari
$185
Curl-Crested Aracari
$185
Grey-Breasted Aracari
$185
Saffron-Coloured Araçari, 1st Edition Plate 28a
$185
Golden Green Aracari
$185
Grooved-Bill Aracari
$185
Derby’s Groove-Bill Aracari
$185
Rumped Groove Bill Aracari
$185
Wedge-tailed Eagle
$185
Little Australian Eagle
$185
White-Bellied Sea Eagle
$185
White-breasted Sea Eagle
$185
Whistling Eagle
$185
White-headed Osprey
$185
Grey Falcon
$185
Black-cheeked Falcon
$185
Black Falcon
$185
White-fronted Falcon
$185
Brown Hawk
$185
Western Brown Hawk
$185
Nankeen Kestril
$185
New Holland Goshawk
$185
White Goshawk
$185
Radiated Goshawk
$185
Australian Goshawk
$185
West Australian Goshawk
$185
Collard Sparrow Hawk
$185
Black-breasted Buzzard
$185
Allied Kite
$185
Square-tailed Kite
$185
Black-shouldered Kite
$185
Letter-winged Kite
$185
Crested Hawk
$185
Allied Harrier
$185
Jardine’s Harrier
$185
Chestnut-faced Owl
$185
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.