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
Das purpurfarbe Wasserhun
$165
Manakin à Tête d’Or
$165
Mocking Bird
$725
Regent Bird
$225
Cinclosoma Erythrocephalum
$185
La Perruche Omnicolore
$195
Scholekster
$185
Le tiercelet sors de faucon au plumage de cresserelle
$235
Der Aschfarbe Reiger aus North-Amerika
$165
Moucherolle Rubin
$165
Purple Martin
$475
Satin Bowerbird
$225
Cinclosoma Leucolophum
$185
La Perruche Omnicolore
$195
Grutto
$185
Le tiercelet sors de l’autour
$235
Der Auerhahn mit einer Halskrause
$165
Oiseau Mouche Chatoyant
$165
Yellow-breasted Warbler
$350
Rawnsley’s Satin Bird
$225
Petrocincla Cinclorhyncha
$185
La grande Perruche a Collier
$195
Houtpitoortje
$185
Le tiercelet sors de l’autour
$235
Der Curassovogel und der Cuscu
$165
Oiseau Mouche Hirondelle
$165
Roscoe’s Yellow-throat
$350
Spotted Bowerbird
$225
Myophonus Horsfieldhii
$185
La Perruche a Poitrine Rose
$195
Nest van het Houtpitoortje
$185
Le vol du héron 1
$235
Der Dodo und das Meerschweingen
$165
Oiseau Mouche Rubis Topaze
$165
Song Sparrow
$350
Great Grey Bowerbird
$225
Myophonus Temminckii
$185
La Perruche Ingambe
$195
Boomkruiper
$185
Le vol du héron 2
$235
Der Eisvogel mit dem Schwalbenschwans
$165
Oiseau Mouche très petit
$165
Red-headed Woodpecker
$475
Buff-breasted Bower-bird
$225
Zoothera Monticola
$185
La Perruche à tête jaune
$195
Meerkoet
$185
L’autour hagard
$235
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.