Hummingbird prints
Hummingbirds from John Gould’s Family of Hummingbirds (1849–1861), in which most plates show two or three birds among plants, at least one of them in flight. A few come from John James Audubon’s The Birds of America and Jean Théodore Descourtilz’s birds of Brazil. Every print is a facsimile giclée at the size of the original sheet, limited to 250.
Decorated Woodstar
$185
Heliodore’s Woodstar
$185
Short-tailed Woodstar
$185
Crimson-throated Woodstar
$185
Jourdan’s Woodstar
$185
Fanny’s Woodstar
$185
Yarrell’s Woodstar
$185
Cora’s Sheartail
$185
Evening Hummingbird
$185
Mexican Sheartail
$185
Bahama Woodstar
$185
Slender Sheartail
$185
Sparklingtail
$185
The Amethyst
$185
Mitchell’s Amethyst
$185
Marvellous Hummingbird
$185
White-booted Rackettail
$185
Ecuadorian Rackettail
$185
Peruvian Rackettail
$185
Red-booted Rackettail
$185
Scissor-tailed Rackettail
$185
Bogota Trainbearer
$185
Graceful Trainbearer
$185
Nouna Koali
$185
Trainbearer (1)
$185
Trainbearer (2)
$185
Blue-tailed Sylph
$185
Green-tailed Sylph
$185
The Sappho Comet
$185
The Phaon Comet
$185
Purple-tailed Comet
$185
Charles’s Comet
$185
Temminck’s Sapphire-wing
$185
Shining Sunbeam
$185
Castelnau’s Sunbeam
$185
Guerin’s Helmetcrest
$185
Linden’s Helmetcrest
$185
Columbian Thornbill
$185
Stanley’s Thornbill
$185
Southern Thornbill
$185
Herran’s Thornbill
$185
Red-capped Thornbill
$185
Thornbill
$185
Whittip
$185
Coppery Tail
$185
Brassy Tail
$185
Purple Tail
$185
Primoli’s Hummingbird
$185
About hummingbird prints
Hummingbirds were John Gould’s passion, and his monograph of the family has five volumes with 360 hand-coloured lithographs. Our prints come from the first four, in his order: the sawbills, sicklebills and hermits of volume 1; the sabrewings, topazes, hillstars, mangoes and jacobins of volume 2, ending with the Snow-cap; the coquettes, racket-tails, trainbearers, comets and thornbills of volume 3; and in volume 4 the Ruby and Topaz, the Giant Hummingbird, the Sword-bill and the puff-legs. Start with the Crimson Topaz or the Marvellous Hummingbird. All of them are on Family of Hummingbirds, and What books did John Gould publish? sets it among his other works.
The other plates come from two very different books. Jean Théodore Descourtilz, who lived in Brazil, drew his hummingbirds at the flowers they feed on, in Oiseaux brillans du Brésil (1834). Audubon’s four hummingbirds, the ruby-throated hummingbird of plate 47 among them, share the large sheet of his eagles.