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Hand-Colored Engraving of Exotic Tropical Birds from Histoire Naturelle, 1790
£110 ($145, €130)
Period original, not a reproduction.
Shipped from the Netherlands, flat, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.
- Date
- 1790
- Size
- 12.2 × 8.7 in (31 × 22 cm)
- Condition
- Good, given age. Rough outside the platemark but image is fine. Contemporary hand-colouring. General age-related toning and occasional minor defects from handling. Please study scans carefully.
- Period
- 18th century
- Section
- Birds
- Reference
- f_41462392
Four tropical birds on a single plate, an original copperplate engraving with hand coloring from the Histoire Naturelle (Ornithologie) of the Encyclopédie Méthodique, circa 1790. The plate is numbered "Pl. 194" at the upper right, signed "Benard Direxit" at the lower right, and lettered "Histoire Naturelle, Ornithologie" at the foot.
Two panels within a ruled yellow border hold the birds. In the upper panel, Fig. 1, "Le Verdiole", is a gray and green bird with a small red crest perched on a branch, and Fig. 3, "Le Moucherolle", is a flycatcher with olive-green wings and a very long tapering tail, shown on a bare limb. Below, Fig. 4, "Le Babichon de Cayenne", is an olive and brown bird with blue-gray wings and tail on a gnarled branch, and Fig. 2, "Le Savana", is the fork-tailed flycatcher, a bird with a black and green cap, white throat, pink flank and extremely long, forked tail streaming away to the lower left.
The names show a New World focus: one bird is named for Cayenne in French Guiana and another for the open savannas of South America, where the fork-tailed flycatcher lives. Hand-applied watercolor tints the plumage over the engraved outlines.
