Jacques Barraband

Watercolors signed by Jacques Barraband for the Description de L'Egypte. 

• Sold as a set of 3.
• Jacques Barraband (French, 1768-1809).
• [L'aigle criard; L'aigle criard (jeune); L'élanoide blanc / The Greater Spotted Eagle; The Greater Spotted Eagle (young); White swallow-tailed kite).
• Circa 1801.
• Watercolors with gouache highlights on the pencil line.
• These three watercolors are plate numbers one and two in vol. I, Zoologie.
• 2 of the 3 watercolors described here are signed: 1 is unsigned as it was part of the other signed plate.
• Each is presented framed.

Jacques Barraband (1767-1809) was one of the finest ornithological artists of his time. The son of a weaver at the Aubusson Factory, he is first mentioned as a pupil of Joseph Malaine (1745-1809), the eminent flower painter, and is known to have worked for both the Gobelin Factory and the porcelain factory of Sèvres.

These watercolors are excellent examples of Barraband's remarkable talent and meticulous detail when it came to depicting plumage and color.

These watercolors were in fact intended to illustrate the System of Birds of Egypt and Syria written by the zoologist Marie-Jules César Lelorme de Savigny (1777-1851) and published in 1809. This text was itself part of Volume I of the Natural History of the Description of Egypt, or Collection of observations and research that were made in Egypt during the expedition of the French army, published by the orders of his majesty the Emperor Napoleon the Great. This work, which consisted of 9 volumes of texts and 11 volumes of plates, was the fruit of the important scientific expedition that accompanied Napoleon's Egyptian campaign which was launched in April 1798.

The Description de l'Egypte work aimed to highlight the greatness of Egypt, which at the time was extremely popular in Europe. In order to produce the most complete vision of Egypt, as well as the antiquities and architecture, the fauna and flora were also described with contributions by scholars such as Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, whose texts Barraband also illustrates. In total, the artist contributed 44 plates of birds to the Description de l'Egypt. His drawings were then engraved for Savigny were engraved by Louis Bouquet.

The richness and quality of Barraband's work was recognized as early as 1804, when he was awarded a gold medal for his illustrations for the Description de l'Egypt and Levaillant's Natural History.