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print room
| The passenger pigeon, also called the wild pigeon, was the most abundant bird of Audubon's time. JJA writes memorably of a migration he witnessed in 1813 when flock after flock darkened the skies for days. The birds laid waste to large areas of forest through the sheer weight of their numbers, and provided easy pickings for anyone with a gun. In 1900 the last passenger pigeon ever to be recorded in the wild was shot in Ohio by a young boy who had never seen one before. Fourteen years later, the last bird of the species, a female named Martha, died in her cage in the Cincinnati Zoo.
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After John James Audubon. Plate 62 Passenger
Pigeon from The Birds of America. Hand-colored etching with engraving and aquatint by Robert Havell. On paper watermarked J
WHATMAN/TURKEY MILL/1828 and measuring 39-1/4 inches by 25-3/4 inches. First state with outstanding original color. An extraordinary composition of a bird with an extraordinary history.
Print for sale in our
Havell Edition area.
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See the rare
prints corner for unusual or one-of-a-kind original Audubon prints.
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After John James Audubon. Northern Hare (Winter). From the Imperial Folio edition of
The Viviparous
Quadrupeds of North America. Hand-colored stone
lithograph by J. T. Bowen, Philadelphia, 1845. This print is for
sale in our Imperial Folio
area. |
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The (Viviparous) Quadrupeds of North America
- Imperial Folio prints.
We have an excellent selection of these large hand-colored stone lithographs including a large number of the
smaller (and less expensive) mammals.
- Love Audubon's Imperial animals, but can't afford an original? We
have some high-quality
giclée and offset facsimiles of these rarely reproduced
prints.
- Octavo prints.
This page offers links to both first and later editions of these smaller
well-priced animal prints. It also includes information on a very rare
and complete fascicle (also called part or number).
Other artists
We currently have in stock a selection of fine prints by
other important natural history artists.
- Rex Brasher water birds
-- Prints from the third volume of Brasher's monumental work The Birds
and Trees of North America, including ducks, geese, swans, flamingo, spoonbill, ibises and
herons. Published in the 1930s with prints hand-colored by
Brasher.
- Hummingbirds by John
Gould (hand-colored lithographs, circa 1850s).
- Hand-colored engravings by Prideaux
John Selby.
- An original 18th century hand-colored engraving after Mark
Catesby.
- Plates from Alexander
Wilson's and Charles Lucien Bonaparte's American Ornithology. We have
a nice selection of second edition Wilson prints (circa 1828-1829) and a
single octavo print from the 1832 Jardine edition with engraving by Lizars.
We also have the complete set of the Porter and Coates edition of the
joint work (Wilson's American Ornithology as supplemented by Charles
Lucien Bonaparte, 103 plates total).
- Hand-colored engravings from a 19th century edition of Goldsmith (birds,
animals, insects, and fish, plus small hand-colored engravings from late 18th century works by Buffon and
Wilhelm (art by J. J. Schmuzer). These decorative
prints are beautiful and very affordable.
mystery closet
Open the door to the mystery closet to see prints about which we are missing
information. We have a new print in this area, a hand-colored lithograph of
an owl on J WHATMAN 1832 paper sent in by a visitor. Unfortunately, the
print is trimmed to the image, and all text is missing. We also have in
this area two Catesbys (new information added 2/2004), a Gould (mystery
solved), and a Bien reproduction (more of a rarity than a mystery). Look in and see if you
notice any new clues...or perhaps even solve the mystery.
study
Go into the study
if you'd like to learn how to authenticate Audubon prints.

Last updated 07.10.10
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