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Spectacular Rare Large Antique Bird Print of The Large-Bill Puffin, 1868
£1,570 ($2,085, €1,850)
Period original, not a reproduction.
Shipped from the Netherlands, flat, insured and tracked, worldwide. Returns accepted within 14 days.
- Date
- 1868
- Size
- 19.7 × 15.9 in (50 × 40.5 cm)
- Condition
- Very good, general age-related toning. Please study image carefully.
- Period
- Late 19th century
- Section
- Birds
- Reference
- f_26426272
The large-billed puffin, plate "Fratercula Glacialis," an original hand-colored lithograph from Daniel Giraud Elliot's The New and Heretofore Unfigured Species of the Birds of North America, published in New York for the author between 1866 and 1869. The large folio sheet is dated 1868 and is lettered "Drawn from Nature by J. Wolf, London" at the lower left and "Bowen & Co. Lith. & Col'd Philada." at the lower right.
A single puffin stands in profile on a pale rocky ledge in the foreground, drawn near life size, with its black back, white breast, gray face and orange legs. The deep bill is painted in bands of blue, yellow and red. Behind, two more puffins stand at the water's edge and another is in flight, over a calm sea with a low headland on the horizon. The species name is printed in capitals beneath the image.
Elliot's work concentrated on North American birds that Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon had not figured, with a particular focus on the American West and some species from Alaska and the Arctic. The plates were predominantly lithographed by Bowen of Philadelphia, here after a drawing by the celebrated natural history artist Joseph Wolf.
