19th Century Bird Print - One of 24, Framed

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Mr John Gould's tropical framed Bird prints 1955, taken from his limited edition of 1000. The most celebrated British ornithologist … Read more Mr John Gould's tropical framed Bird prints 1955, taken from his limited edition of 1000. The most celebrated British ornithologist of the nineteenth-century John Gould (1804-1881) was a businessman, publisher, and obsessive bird collector with an eye for a talented artist. He displayed his entrepreneurial skills from a young age while an apprentice in the royal gardens at Windsor, where, by the age of 14, he was selling stuffed birds to the sons of the aristocracy at Eton College. By the time he was 21 he had set up his own taxidermy business in London. Gould is best remembered for his folio volumes of superb colour-plate illustrations of birds. In all, 2999 unique images were produced for these publications, many were the first illustrations of previously unknown species. It is estimated that over half a million individual hand-coloured plates were produced under the Gould name. This extraordinary output was the result of Gould's drive and business acumen as well as an ability to develop a strong international group of specimen collectors, artists and administrative agents. It is an irony that a man who never finished a picture is remembered as one of the most significant bird artists of the Victorian age. More skilled as an entrepreneur than as an artist, Gould relied on his group of dedicated artists, lithographers and colourers to translate his preparatory sketches into finished illustrations. Yet during his lifetime and beyond, Gould has often been represented as the sole creator of the thousands of plates published in his books. The main artists and lithographers who worked with Gould included his wife, Elizabeth; Edward Lear - now better known for his limericks and nursery rhymes; the great natural history artist, Josef Wolf; and Gould's long-term employees Henry Constantine Richter and William Matthew Hart. A number of these artists are considered the finest practitioners of natural history art in the 19th century. See less