Date of Printing: 1862 • Medium: Lithograph (hand colored) • Subject Category: Natural History - Birds • Signed: Plate signed, Lower Left • Period Created: Romantic (1800 - 1899) • Plate Size HxWxD cm: N/A • Leaf Paper Size HxW cm: 36 x 54.5 • Style: FOLIO Original Vintage • Print on Verso: Blank on verso • Condition: Excellent, with minor toning at edges • Edition Type: 1st Edition - Limited • Paper Type: Woven • Framed: Print only
LARUS GLAUCUS - The Glaucous Seagull, of Greenland and the polar regions, depicted on a rock covered with seaweed, featuring a small starfish, with a juvenile gull in the water behind the rock and another soaring in the distance. By Author and Artist John Gould (1804-1881) from his "The Birds Of Great Britain." Published London by the author, 1862-73. Volume 5; Plate 57. Bright & good; spot to lupper right area.
Original hand colored lithographed print with gum arabic added to accentuate the features of the bird. In overall very good to excellent condition. Drawn by John Gould, Joseph Wolf, H.C.Richter & Wm.Hart; Lith'd by H.C.Hart & Wm. Richter. The Glaucus Gull. "Larus Glaucus,Brunn" London. Printed for the author by Taylor and Francis. 1862-1873
This plate, from what Sacheverell Sitwell called "The most popular of all his works" (Fine Bird Books), shows a new liveliness of treatment that is not present in Gould's earlier works. This improvement is thanks to suggestions made by Joseph Wolf, who drew 57 of the plates and accompanied Gould on an ornithological tour of Scandinavia in 1856.
Gould's illustrations were all painstakingly colored by hand, as he states in his preface: "Many of the public are quite unaware how the coloring of these large plates is accomplished; and not a few believe that they are produced by some mechanical process or by chromo-lithography. This, however, is not the case: every sky with its varied tints and every feather of each bird were colored by hand; and when it is considered...it will most likely cause some astonishment to those who give the subject a thought."
References:
Cf.Fine Bird Books (1990), p. 102; cf. Nissen IVB 372; cf. Sauer 23; cf. Wood p. 365; cf. Zimmer p. 261. Anker p. 60; "Fine Bird Books".