Documents

Lot 917    Session 3 (2.30pm Wednesday)    Documents

Estimate $200
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $500

GOULDS BIRD PRINTS, collection of four fine coloured prints 50x38cm printed by Ambascol Press Pty. Ltd., published by Antipodean Publishers Pty. Ltd.; the Australian birds presented in this set are a) Cormorant; b) Glossy Ibis; c) Goshawk; d) Bittern. All placed in folder as a set. (13 sets of 4)

John Gould, the Bird Man, was the enterprising genius behind the creation of 2999 different hand-colored lithographic plates of birds and animals. He was born on September 14, 1804, at Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast in England. As the son of a gardener, Gould had no formal university training. He considered himself a self-made man. He gained his ornithological knowledge by observation and experience. Nevertheless his contributions to this science were so vast that in 1843 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. Gould married Elizabeth Coxen in 1827. Elizabeth traveled and worked with Gould until her death in 1841. Shortly after their marriage, Gould, who was a skilled taxidermist, acquired a collection of bird skins from the hill country of the Himalayas, many of them new to Europe. After he stuffed and mounted them, he realized their artistic possibilities, and his new life as a bird illustrator began. Elizabeth helped to draw, lithograph, and color many of his first plates. Over the next 57 years Gould published more than forty large folio volumes. The first set appeared in 1831 and the last in 1888, seven years after Gould's death. Scholars think that Gould himself did the original sketches for all the plates. Other artists - 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. In his pursuit of new and different birds, John Gould travelled to Asia, Australia and the East Indies. His series of natural history plates is considered by many as the finest works of bird illustrations ever presented. This multiple set of prints represents an opportunity to market sets of these extraordinary prints.