Owl prints
Owls by John James Audubon and John Gould, from the Snowy Owl and the Great Horned Owl of The Birds of America to the Eagle Owl of Gould’s Birds of Great Britain. Audubon’s owls are printed on the full Double Elephant Folio sheet, 26½ × 39¼ in, Gould’s on his folio sheet of about 15 × 22 in, each as a facsimile giclée limited to 250.
About owl prints
In his drawings Audubon used pastel to give owls their soft plumage, and on the printed plates of The Birds of America Robert Havell rendered it in aquatint and hand colouring. Among his owls here are the Barred Owl, the Burrowing Owl and the Little Screech Owl. Five owls appear under the same name in Audubon and in Gould: the Snowy, Barn, Long-eared, Hawk and Tengmalm’s Owl, so an American plate can hang beside a British one.
John Gould’s owls come from four of his books. The ten of The Birds of Great Britain include the Snowy Owl, whose lithographic stone was dropped and broken early in the printing, so that later impressions show the damage; What is John Gould’s The Birds of Great Britain? tells more. The Birds of Australia adds Australian owls from the Masked Barn Owl to the Powerful Owl, and The Birds of Asia and The Birds of New Guinea add scops owls, an owlet and hawk-owls.