Description
Description of John Gould's Birds of Europe by Edward Lear
These fabulous Edward Lear prints are hand-colored lithographs from John Gould's famous work, Birds of Europe, published in London between 1832 and 1837. John Gould is perhaps the greatest ornithological artist of all time. During his lifetime, which spanned the years 1804 to 1881, he created over 3000 plates of birds in over 40 volumes. Gould's father was a gardener, and it was at a young age that he learned taxidermy at Windsor Castle. In 1827, he became a taxidermist for the Zoological Society of London; it was during this same year that he married Elizabeth Coxen. In around 1830, Gould received some exotic bird skins from the Himalayas. Shortly thereafter in 1831, he published his first work, A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains. This work along with the first edition of Ramphastidae and Birds of Europe were enormously successful and allowed him to raise enough capital to travel abroad. He went to such places as Australia and New Guinea where he observed and sketched the native birds and mammals. It is widely accepted that Gould sketched all 3000 of his plates. However, his wife, Lear, Wolf, Hart, and Richter did much of the remaining artistic work such as transferring these sketches to stone, hand-printing, and hand-coloring. His wife and Lear are particularly well-known for their masterful artistry. Gould's last work was published after his death in 1888. Gould's prints are masterful in design, composition, detail, accuracy, and color. Even during their original time of publication, his plates were very expensive. Only the wealthiest were able to purchase Gould's work in small sets at a time. In all, there are 448 hand-colored, lithographed prints in Birds of Europe. These prints were fully drawn, lithographed, and colored by Edward Lear after Gould's original sketch. Lear's images in Birds of Europe "are certainly amongst the most remarkable bird drawings ever made, [for] it is evident that Lear endowed them with some measure of his own whimsy and intelligence, his energetic curiosity, his self-conscious clumsiness and his unselfconscious charm" (Hyman). Lear worked on most of the larger birds in this work including the eagles, vultures, cranes, storks, pelicans, herons, geese, owls, and others. During a time period when ornithologists were studying birds of remote areas of the world, Gould created this remarkable work to raise the awareness and understanding of birds in Europe. They are on fine heavy stock paper that measures 14 1/2" by 21".