Sir William Jardine
Leaves from the Book of Nature: 14 Folio Salesman's Sheets
from The Naturalist's Library
W.H. Lizars, Edinburgh, S. Highly, London & W. Curry Junr. & Co., Dublin: c. 1840s
22 x 16 inches
Hand-colored engravings
Sold, please inquire as to the availability of similar items.
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Sir William Jardine
Sir William Jardine
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Folio salesmen's sheets, with groupings of etchings by William H. Lizars, created for publication in Sir William Jardine's The Naturalist's Library, a popular 40-volume set of books intended to describe and record all the vertebrate species. Lizars was a prominent natural history engraver, who engraved and published the first group of folio plates in John Audubon's seminal Birds of America.
These sheets, all birds, were intended as salesman's samples or advertising posters. They are not galleys or uncut sheets, but are large folio sheets, each incorporating 12 images from the series that would, in the series, be small prints. As such they are rare and provide good opportunity to have displayable prints from this famous series, since the cut prints from the finished books are so small.
Each one is titled "Leaves from the Book of Nature," and inscribed in the bottom margin, "FOR FULL DESCRIPTIONS VIDE THE NATURALIST'S LIBRARY/ Published by W.H. Lizars Edinburgh, S. Highly London. & W. Curry Junr. & Co. Dublin/ and sold by all Book & Print Sellers."
Sir William Jardine, a major figure in 19th Century Victorian science. He owned the finest private natural history museum and library in Britain, and edited the Naturalist's Library: 40 small, illustrated and relatively affordable volumes, a project emblematic of the Victorian enthusiasm for creating comprehensive educational natural history books and making them available to a broader public. He wrote 14 of the volumes dealing with birds and fish himself, and had other naturalists write the rest. The series was divided into four main sections: Ornithology, Mammalia, Entomology and Ichthyology, and illustrated by prominent natural history artists, including Edward Lear. With its high-quality hand-coloured illustrations, it is seldom found complete today.
William Home Lizars was a Scottish painter and engraver. His earliest exhibited paintings were portraits and genre works. After the death of his father in 1812 he concentrated increasingly on engraving, though he continued to exhibit sporadically until 1830. He quickly established himself as Edinburgh's leading engraver, producing portraits and banknotes. With his brother, the surgeon John Lizars, he produced a atlas of human anatomy and was chosen by Audubon for his Birds of America, on which he worked between 1826 and 1830. (He subsequently surrendered the contract, and his plates were recut.) Then he worked on Jardine's monumental project. He also produced topographical engravings in cooperation with various artists.
References:
"Sir William Jardine, The Naturalist's Library." Ursus Books. http://www.polybiblio.com/ursus/93745.html (10 May 2002).
"William Home Lizars." The Grove Dictionary of Art. New York: Macmillan. 2000. Artnet.com. http://www.artnet.com/library/05/0514/T051457.asp (10 May 2002).