Bird Art

 John Gould

   I happened to notice the image above, which is from a Gould work found in the Collection of Barbara and Ira Lipman which is being auctioned by Sotheby's. It is only one of the 269 items being offered and the starting bid for the Gould folio is $80,000. It is not the most expensive work in the lot. A 'Babe' Ruth baseball card is expected to fetch between $300,000 to $500,000 U.S.  You will have to hurry since the auction begins closing on Dec.16. Details about all of the books and manuscripts and odds and ends are easily found on the website of Sotheby's. 

   If you go to the Sotheby's site you will find enough to keep you busy for a long while. If you are interested in our subject for today - Bird Art - and the bird artist John Gould, then you need to visit The John Gould Ornithological Collection at the University of Kansas. Those of you who are tired of my prose, can go directly to the site to view thousands of beautiful bird illustrations.

   John Gould was born in Dorset in 1804 and over the years produced, along with his wife and Edward Lear, over 50 large illustrated volumes with alluring titles such as A Century of Birds From the Himalaya Mountains. He is an interesting character and it will be easy for you to learn more about him. 

   The story relating to how the Gould works came to reside in Kansas is also interesting.  It involves a compulsive collector of all things avian - Ralph Nicholson Ellis, Jr. He was so obsessed and so eager to spend his inheritance on bird books that his mother had him institutionalized and his wife filed for divorce. During all of these problems he had  his 65,000-item collection shipped in two boxcars which ended up on a siding in Kansas where the head of the Museum of Natural History in Lawrence, agreed to store them. The rest is history, as they say, and more details are provided in "The Story of the Gould Collection" by Karen Cook which is found on the University of Kansas website provided above.  For more about Ellis and his "galloping bibliomania" see Basbane's,  A Gentle Madness, p.21.

   With the financial assistance of the NEH, more than 6,000 drawings, lithographs and watercolours were digitized and  are viewable online. Here is the formal description of the collection:
This collection of the large-format bird books published by John Gould (1804-1881) also includes several thousand pieces of pre-publication artwork produced by Gould and his artists. It is part of the Ralph Nicholson Ellis, Jr. natural-history collection in Special Collections, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.

The Bonus Material:

   If you are a 'birder' and interested in bird books, have a look at the Soffer Ornithology Collection at Amherst. Although the books have not been digitized it is interesting see the notes about the books which were provided by the collector. There are several Gould books listed.

   Perhaps you are wondering whether the university closer by has any Gould books. Here is the answer:

Books by John Gould in the Western University Libraries

(This list was gathered by me. For a thorough account you should check with a Western Librarian.)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of Asia. Illus. from the lithographs of John Gould. Text by A. Rutgers.   London : Methuen, 1969, c1968.

QL674.G668.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881.  Birds of Australia. Ill. by John Gould. Text by Abram Rutgers. London, Methuen [1967]

QL693.G58.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of Europe. Illus. by John Gould. Text by A. Rutgers. London, Methuen [1966]

 QL690.A1G64.(storage)

 Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of New Guinea. Illus. from the lithographs of John Gould. Text by A. Rutgers. New York, St. Martin's Press [1971, c1970

 QL694.N4G68 1971.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of South America. Illus. from the lithographs of John Gould.  Text by A. Rutgers. London, Eyre Methuen [1972] 

QL689.A1G68 1972.(storage)

Lambourne, Maureen. Birds of the world : over 400 of John Gould's classic bird  illustrations / Maureen Lambourne.

London : Studio, 1992. QL674.L35 1992. (DBWOVR)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. John Gould's Birds of Great Britain / introduction by Maureen Lambourne. London : Eyre Methuen, 1980.

QL690.G7G76 1980.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. The Mammals of Australia / John Gould ; with modern notes by Joan M. Dixon. South Melbourne : Macmillan 1983.

QL733.G7 1983.(storage)

For biographical details see:

John Gould: The Birdman: A Chronology and Bibliography, by Gordon C. Sauer, 

QL31. G67S28 1982 (storage)

John Gould’s Contribution to British Art: A Note on Its Authenticity, Allan McEvery

QL31.G67M3 1973 (storage)

The Ruling Passion of John Gould: A Biography of the Bird Man, Isabella Tree, 1991

QL31.G67T74 1991 DBWSTK

See also Basbane’s A Gentle Madness… TX907.C67 2001, DBWSTK

Bird Eggs: If you are interested in beautiful pictures of eggs see: Oology and Ralph's Talking Eggs: Bird Conservation Comes Out Of Its Shell, Carrol Henderson. ( a copy is available at the Taylor Library at Western.)

"In Oology and Ralph's Talking Eggs, Carrol L. Henderson uses the vast egg collection of Ralph Handsaker, an Iowa farmer, as the starting point for a fascinating account of oology and its role in the origins of modern birdwatching, scientific ornithology, and bird conservation in North America. Henderson describes Handsaker's and other oologists' collecting activities, which included not only gathering bird eggs in the wild but also trading and purchasing eggs from collectors around the world. Henderson then spotlights sixty of the nearly five hundred bird species represented in the Handsaker collection, using them to tell the story of how birds such as the Snowy Egret, Greater Prairie Chicken, Atlantic Puffin, and Wood Duck have fared over the past hundred years or so since their eggs were gathered. Photos of the eggs and historical drawings and photos of the birds illustrate each species account, Henderson also links these bird histories to major milestones in bird conservation and bird protection laws in North America from 1875 to the present. While wild bird conservation has come a long way in the last hundred years, this book is a call to action for conservationists because some modern-day threats to bird life are far more insidious than threats posed to birds a century ago by market hunting and the plume trade."--BOOK JACKET.

For additional research about birds at Western, visit AFAR, which I described here: For the Birds.