de Andrade, Manoel Carlos
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Manoel Carlos de Andrade published an early book of equestrian art in Lisbon, Portugal in 1790 named Luz da Liberal e Nobre Arte da Cavallaria (Light of the Liberal and Noble art of Cavelry). The Portuguese interest in horses sustained the preservation of the characteristics of the classical Iberian war horse, and de Andrade illustrated the fast and agile Gineta style of riding aboard the most beautiful of these horses, the Lusitano. Presented here are hand colored copper plate engravings from this work.
Audubon,
John James
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The imperial folio of The Vivaparous Quadrapeds of North
America was the greatest illustrated natural history
work to be produced in America during the nineteenth century
(Philadelphia, 1845–1848). It was Audubon’s last
work before his death in 1851. The hand-colored stone lithographs
represent the work of not only John James Audubon, but also
John Bachman (whose name also appears on the title page),
John Bowen (lithographer) and Audubon’s sons, John Woodhouse,
who helped illustrate the animals and is given credit for
those entirely his own in the legends, and Victor, who painted
most of the backgrounds yet did not receive credit in the
legends as was customary at the time.
The octavo edition of The Quadrapeds of North
America was published in 1854, three years after Audubon's death.
The octavo edition contained an additional five plates that the folio edition did
not.
Baudement, Emile
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A young "zootechnician", Emile Baudement (1810 - 1864)
invented a radical new view of animal husbandry at the Institute of Agriculture
at Versailles, France in 1848. Baudement introduced the idea that the deliberate
delivery of nutrition, selective reproduction, and increased physical care for
livestock could influence the quantity and quality of their production for food, and thereby increase profits for farms. His ideas were the birth of the rational and economic exploration of domestic animals. In 1856, he published a folio of hand colored lithographs with illustrations of a variety of breeds of domestic bovines, Les Races Bovines au Concours Universel Agricole, from which these prints are taken.
Bonnaterre, Pierre Joseph
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These hand-colored copper plate engravings are from the 1788 "Ichthyologie" section of the natural history encyclopedia Tableau Encyclopedique et Methodique des Trois Regnes de la Nature originally published in Paris in 1788. Bonnaterre was a a professor at the school of Rhodes and a French naturalist. He collected over 400 drawings of fish from other naturalists of the period and identified over 25 new species.
Brodtmann, Karl Joseph
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Hand-colored lithographs from the work Naturhistorische Bilder Gallerie aus dem Theirreiche lithographed by Karl Joseph Brodtmann. These prints were published circa 1824. Swiss-born Brodtmann was an expert lithographer considered one of the most accomplished of the early 19th century.
Comte de Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc
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Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was the French naturalist perhaps most responsible for the rise of European interest in natural history during the eighteenth century. His massive 44-volume Histoire Naturelle (1749-1804) set out to organize all that was then known about the natural world. He was the source of important ideas about the distribution of plants and animals around the globe, relationships among species, the age of the earth, the sources of biological variation, and the possibility of evolution.
The numerous illustrations to Buffon's 44 volumes, which began publication in 1749, became the source of information about the visual appearance of creatures that inhabited every continent.
Buffon's encyclopedic and empirical method influenced the gathering of knowledge in numerous fields. He organized one of the first experiments to prove that lightning was electrical, basing his metallic lightning rod directly on the work of Benjamin Franklin. As Director of the Jardin du Roi, now called the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris, he became the model of the scientific collector, analyzing living, dead, and fossilized organisms in an effort to understand their anatomy, reproduction, classification, and distribution. He transformed the king's garden into a scientifically significant museum and research center where he gathered data for his writings. His publication of Histoire Naturelle, was the first modern attempt to systematically present all existing knowledge in the fields of natural history, geology, and anthropology in a single publication.
Cassell, Petter
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The delightful dog portraits from The Illustrated Book of the Dog by Petter Cassell were produced in London circa 1881. They are an excellent example of extremely fine chromolithography being printed in the late nineteenth century.
Catesby, Mark
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Published in 1747, prior to the American Revolutionary War, Mark Catesby's The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and The Bahama Islands was the first illustrated work of American natural history. Catesby had spent 5 years exploring South Carolina beginning in 1722, making notes, collecting specimines and making drawings. He taught himself the complicated process of copper plate engraving and executed almost every aspect of this monumental science and natural history art publication.
Catton, Charles
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Charles Catton (the younger) (1756-1819). His publication of Animals drawn from nature, a work illustrating exotic and domestic animals, was completed in the late eighteenth century using the elaborate process of aquatint etching. It is the earliest use of aquatint for a work on natural history (Prideaux p289), and provides delicate detail and texture. The quite rare hand-colored prints were originally issued in London in 1788.
Harris, John
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John Harris edited an accumulated work entitled Navigantium atque itinerantium bibliotheca, Or, A Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels: ...and published it in London in 1748. In it was presented a history of all known voyages and travels anywhere in the world from Columbus down to Anson. It was the most important compendium of travels of the eighteenth century. Presented here are copper plate engravings from this work.
Howitt, Samuel
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Samuel Howitt (1756-1822) was a noted painter who illustrated for several published works, including Etchings of Animals (1803), Oriental Field Sports (1805 and later), and Fables of Aesop (1809 and later). During the nineteenth century the hunting of wild game was a common leisure activity in India and Africa and Howitt captured not only the excitement of the hunt, but also the native Indian fauna and flora with his detailed images which were later engraved into copper plates for publication.
Landseer, Sir Edwin
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Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873) was a talented animal painter during the Victorian age. Many times his animal scenes would be illustrated with a moral dimension for added appeal. His paintings were widely circulated in his time in the form of engravings, often made by his brother Thomas.
Lacepede et Cuvier
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French naturalist Bernard-Germain-Etienne Delaville, Comte de Lacepede (1756-1825), was a professor of zoology at the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle (Museum of Natural History) in Paris. Influenced by Georges Louis Marie Leclerc, comte de Buffon, Lacepede published a number of books on zoology. In 1800, he published La Menagerie du Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, which documented quadrupeds, reptiles and amphibians in the museum's menagerie collection. The descriptive text was written by Lacepede and his colleague Georges L. C., Baron Cuvier (1769-1832), who established the extinction of past animal and plant species and contributed research in vertebrate and invertebrate zoology and paleontology. The fine copper plate engravings were rendered from illustrations created by the most eminent natural history artists of the period, Nicolas Marechal (1753-1803), Nicolas Huet (1770-1830) and Leon de Wailly (1801-1824), and executed by Simon Charles Miger, a very talented Paris engraver.
Merian Sr., Matthaeus
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Hand-colored copper plate engravings from Historia Naturalis. Authored by scholar John Johnston, the work was engraved by Matthaeus Merian, Sr. just before his death in 1650. The highly read publication was published in 1653.
Seba, Albertus
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Albertus Seba (1665 - 1736) was a practicing apothecary from Amsterdam with an insatiable curiosity for natural history items. He traveled extensively in both East and West Indies and collected specimens for his own amusement. He developed a massive catalog of his collection, and many of the engravings from Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri were illustrations from his own "cabinet of curiosities". The collection was eventually sold to Peter the Great of Russia for a vast amount of money, which enabled Seba to build a second collection of specimens larger than the first. Presented here are 4 copper plate engravings from one of the most important natural history publications of the 18th century.
Schinz, Heinrich Rudolf
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Heinrich Rudolf Schinz (1777 - 1861) studied medicine and became a physician in Zurich at the age of 21. He became a teacher at the medical institute in 1804 and served on the board and as the secretary for the Zurich Zoological Society. He translated French naturalist George Cuvier's work "La rgne animal" into German and published his own richly illustrated works of humans, mammals, birds, amphibians and fish between 1821 and 1852 including Das Thierreich (1821-4), Naturgeschichte und Abildungen der Reptilien (1833-4), and Europasche Fauna (1840). In 1833, he became a noted professor of natural history at the University of Zurich.
Shaw, George
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George Shaw (1751-1813) was a British medical practitioner who became a noted botanist and zoologist. He became the keeper of the natural history department at the British Museum. He produced several publications, including Museum Leverianum, General Zoology, or Systematic Natural History , and The Naturalist's Miscellany: Or, Coloured Figures Of Natural Objects; Drawn and Described Immediately From Nature. from which these hand-colored copper engravings are taken.
St. Hilaire, Etienne Geoffroy
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Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772-1844)received a law degree in 1790 and later studied medicine and science in Paris. He was appointed a professor of vertebrate zoology at the Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle. Geoffroy accompanied Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, and brought back many animal specimens to Paris, notably mummified cats and birds. He befriended Georges Cuvier and collaborated with him on several research and publishing projects, including Histoire Naturelle des Mammiferes avec les figures originales d'apres des animaux vivants (Natural History of Mammals with Original Pictures after Living Animals), a four-volume set containing 11 plain and 412 hand-colored copper engravings. It was among the most important works produced in the early 19th century on the study and classification of animals.
Miscellaneous
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Miscellaneous antiquarian animal prints.
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