Pair of Bird of Paradise Prints
Richard Bowdler Sharpe, London: 1891-98

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Epimachus Ellioti, Ward [Elliot's Bird of Paradise] Astrarchia Stephaniae, Finsch. [Stephanie's Astrapia]
Epimachus Ellioti, Ward [Elliot's Bird of Paradise] Astrarchia Stephaniae, Finsch. [Stephanie's Astrapia]
Epimachus Ellioti, Ward [Elliot's Bird of Paradise]
Astrarchia Stephaniae, Finsch. [Stephanie's Astrapia]
Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847-1909) (editor)
William Matthew Hart (1830-1908) (artist and lithographer)
Mintern Brothers (printers)
Epimachus Ellioti, Ward [Elliot's Bird of Paradise]
Astrarchia Stephaniae, Finsch. [Stephanie's Astrapia]
from Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise, and Ptilonorhynchidae, or Bower Birds
Taylor & Francis for Henry Sotheran & Co., London: 1891-98
Hand-colored lithographs
21 x 14 inches, image size in mat opening
22 x 15.25 inches overall (average approximate)
30.5 x 23.5 inches overall framed
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Pair of prints of vividly colored birds of paradise, each showing a male and female of the species.  In Astrarchia Stephaniae they are perched on a branch with a tropical vista in the background.  In Epimachus Ellioti they are arranged in a dramatic composition that emphasizes their unusual shape, with the male inverted in the foreground.  In both prints, the artist captures the stunning, subtle purple iridescence of the males’ sweeping tail feathers. 

These plates come from Monograph of the Paradiseidae, produced by two protégés and longtime associates of the ornithological artist and entrepreneur John Gould (1804-1881), as a continuation of his splendid Birds of New Guinea and the Adjacent Papuan Islands (1875-88).  William Matthew Hart drew most of the plates for Paradiseidae and lithographed all of them, while Richard Bowdler Sharpe found subscribers to underwrite the publication and wrote the text.  Hart had begun working for Gould as a colorist on Gould’s famous monograph on hummingbirds in 1851, and went on to become “the most accomplished, if not the best, of Gould’s lithographic artists” (Tree).  Sharpe, an ornithologist and curator of birds at the British Museum, was a teenage bird enthusiast when he met Gould, who became his mentor.  Both men worked on Gould’s Birds of New Guinea.   The appendix to Monograph of the Paradiseidae explains:

Gould, in his 'Birds of New Guinea', figured nearly every species known in his day, and he had intended to publish a complete Monograph of the Family, for which purpose he kept the lithographic stones from which the plates had been prepared.  Thus it came to pass that when Messrs. Sotheran purchased the stock of Gould's works after his death, they acquired the stones with which he had intended to illustrate his Monograph of the Paradiseidae.  Many of them were broken or otherwise damaged, and of these some have been redrawn or replaced by new plates by Mr. Hart.  Since Gould's time, however, many marvelous new species have been discovered, and these have been described and figured in the present work.

Birds of paradise are native to eastern Indonesia, New Guinea and northeastern Australia.  The species shown here were relatively recent discoveries for the Western world in the late 19th Century.  Astrarchia stephaniae, also known by the common names Stephanie’s Astrapia or Princess Stephanie's Bird of Paradise, is a New Guinea species discovered and named by the German naturalists Finsch and Meyer in 1885 after the Crown Princess of Austria.  Epimachus ellioti, also known as Elliot’s Bird of Paradise, was first described by Edward Ward in 1873.  This species is either extinct or was actually a hybrid of two other birds, a Black Sicklebill and an Arfak Astrapia (hybrids are not unusual among birds of paradise).

References:

“Birds Guide: Paradisaeidae.”  Animal Kingdom U.S.A.  2005.  http://www.animalkingdom-usa.org/modules.php?name=Birds-MM&page=Bird_of_paradise.html (18 August 2009).

Nissen, Claus. Die Illustrierten Vogelbucher: ihre Geschichte und Bibliographie. Stuttgart: 1976.  865.

Sitwell, Sacheverell. Fine Bird Books, 1700-1900. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990.  p.142.

Tree, Isabella.  The Ruling Passion of John Gould.  New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.  pp. 163-64, 210-211.

Whittel, H.M.  The Literature of Australian Birds: A History And Bibliography.  Reprint of 1954 ed. Mansfield CT: Maurizio Martino, 1993.  p.663.

Wood, Casey A. (ed.)  An Introduction to the Literature of Vertebrate Zoology Based Chiefly on the Titles in the Blacker Library of Zoology, the Emma Shearer Wood Library of Ornithology, the Bibliotheca Osleriana, and Other Libraries of McGill University, Montreal.  London: Humphry Milford, Oxford University Press, 1931.  p.565.

Zimmer, John Todd. Catalogue of the Edward E. Ayer Ornithological Library.  Zoological Series, Publ. 239-240, Vol. 16.  Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1926.  p.581.