First edition of Gould's largest and most important work, and the finest of all Australian bird books.
John Gould was born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, the son of John Gould, a gardener, and his wife Elizabeth Clatworthy. Gould's training was as a taxidermist rather than an artist, and in 1828 he was appointed animal preserver at the museum of the Zoological Society of London. About this time there appeared at the museum a collection of birds formed principally in the north-west Himalayas, the first of any size to reach Europe. The richness of this group of specimens spurred Gould to compile his first folio volume, A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains (see lots 83 and 84). This book heralded a body of work unrivalled in Victorian natural history, comprising forty-one volumes and over 3000 plates, produced over six decades. As Gould grew more successful, the lithographed plates became more ambitious; his later book The Birds of Great Britain (lot 93) shows many of its subjects against charming and picturesque backgrounds absent from his earlier work.
RIGHT: John Gould, A century of birds from the Himalayan mountains, 1832
Gould himself did not execute finished drawings for any of his works, but he did provide rough pencil or watercolour sketches with notes for his artists to work from, and was the moving spirit behind the grand conception of the plates. The artists he employed—including his wife Elizabeth, Edward Lear, Joseph Wolf, Henry Richter, and Joseph Hart—were among the most accomplished of their generation.
Although today we remember Gould primarily for the outstanding beauty of his folios, during his long career, he was at the forefront of ornithological and evolutionary science—his role in identifying different species of tanager brought back by Darwin from the voyage of the Beagle was central to the development of the theory of natural selection.
The magnificent Birds of Australia was issued in a total of forty-one parts over a period of almost thirty years, the last part appearing in August 1869. Gould had originally commenced publishing an ornithology of Australia in 1837, but after only two parts (containing twenty plates), he found that he did not have sufficient material to continue the project. He therefore determined to leave England to procure the specimens necessary for the completion of the enterprise and the original two parts were subsequently cancelled.
In May 1838 Gould set sail for Australia with his wife Elizabeth, and on their arrival, he spent the following nineteen months exploring Tasmania and the adjacent islands, South Australia, and New South Wales, penetrating well into the interior. While he collected new specimens and dispatched them to England, Elizabeth was engaged in drawing numerous birds and plants (as well as giving birth to a son). They were ably assisted by John Gilbert, a zoologist, whom Gould sent to the western and northern parts of Australia, where he made many discoveries and collected hundreds of specimens. Gilbert was eventually killed by natives in 1845.
The Goulds returned to England in August 1840 but sadly Elizabeth died only eleven months later at the age of 37, a shock from which Gould never entirely recovered. He was eventually fortunate in finding a competent artist to continue her work in H.C. Richter. As a result of the labours of Gould and his assistants, well over three hundred new species were added to the existing list of birds known to inhabit Australasia. The finished work cost £115 and attracted 238 subscribers including six monarchs.
REFERENCES: Anker 174 and 179; Ferguson 4773 & 10032a; Fine Bird Books, p. 78; McGill/Wood, p. 365; Nissen IVB 370; Sauer 9 and 18; Whittell, p. 287; Zimmer, p. 259
PROVENANCE: Malcolm of Poltalloch, 1st and last Lord Malcolm of Poltalloch (1833-1902)
ESTIMATE: 150,000–200,000GBP
John Gould — Lots 83-97
