Brown, Peter | "New, Curious, and Non-Descript Birds, with a Few Quadrupeds, Reptiles, and Insects."

Property from the Library of John M. Schiff

Brown, Peter

New Illustrations of Zoology, Containing Fifty Coloured Plates of New, Curious, and Non-Descript Birds, with a Few Quadrupeds, Reptiles and Insects... London: B. White, 1776

4to (293 x 230 mm). Titles and text in English and French, 50 hand-colored engraved plates after the author; a few instances of primarily marginal spotting and soiling, slight browning to a few text leaves. Early nineteenth-century green straight-grain morocco, covers elaborately bordered in gilt and blind, spine with semi-raised bands in five compartments, second gilt-lettered, others with gilt filigree motif, edges gilt; minor rubbing to extremities, corners just bumped, closed crack to lower spine panel.

The work is based mainly on specimens in the natural history collections of Marmaduke Tunstall and Thomas Pennant, but also contains plates based on drawings by the Ceylon artist P.C. de Bevere. Much of the text was written by Pennant, who had previously employed Brown for two of the plates in his British Zoology. Brown was also an accomplished flower painter and exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1770 and 1791.

A handsome copy.

REFERENCE:

Anker 72; Fine Bird Books 82; Nissen IVB 151; Wood 264; Zimmer 101