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Birds of Great Britain
Birds of Great Britain Quick Jump
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The Birds of Great Britain.
This flagship Gould publication is one of Gould's finest works, actually came after he had spent many years collecting, drawing and describing birds from all around the world. When he finally decided to publish birds from his native country it ended up as being a classic collection of 367 plates published in 25 parts and bound into five volumes which were ultimately distributed to almost 500 subscribers.
Gould and his compatriots, H. C. Richter, William Hart and Joseph Wolf brought together the drawings and sketches and Richter was the key visionary who added the beautiful native scenery that makes these images particularly interesting. The views of the British countryside are every part paramount to the artistic showcase of this brilliant work. The work was completed between 1862 and 1873 and our research into the provenance of these particular plates indicate that they are from a very early issue – hence our early 1862 title dating.
Born in 1804, at Lyme Regis, England, John Gould was the son of a gardener. He had no formal university training and considered himself a self-made man. He was a self-taught ornithological student whose important contribution to the science led to his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society. Gould married Elizabeth Coxen in 1827, who was an extremely talented artist who traveled and worked with Gould until her death in 1841. Gould, a skilled taxidermist, acquired a collection of bird skins from the Himalayas, stuffed and mounted them, and eventually realized the possibilities of publishing artistic ornithological works. Elizabeth helped draw, lithograph and color many of his first plates. Gould published more than forty large folio volumes between 1831 and 1888, seven years after Gould's death.
It is believed that Gould himself did the original sketches for all the plates and other artists such as Elizabeth Gould, Edward Lear, Joseph Wolf, William Hart, and H.C. Richter did most of the hand coloring and lithography. With the hummingbirds, which are naturally iridescent, gold or silver leaf was used under the watercolor to mirror their natural beauty. Richard Bowdler Sharp cooperated with Gould on his later works and supervised the completion of the works after Gould's death in 1881.
The making of these prints was technically and artistically demanding. Gould's original sketches were transferred to stone with special pencils or chalk. They were printed by hand from the stones. Each print was hand-colored, and issued in small sets to subscribers only. As the prints were very expensive for their time, only a few hundred of the wealthiest people and institutions could afford them, accounting for their rarity today. In his pursuit of new and different birds, John Gould traveled to Asia, Australia and the East Indies. Many consider his series of natural history plates as the finest works of bird illustrations ever presented.
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