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TRAVIÈS, Edouard (1809-1865)
Greater Bird-of-paradise (Paradisaea apoda) 21./ L'oiseau de Paradis. (Buffon) 9/8 de la Grandeur naturelle/ Paradisea Apoda (Linnee)/ Nouvelle Guinee
Paris & London: E. Savary et Ce. and Gambart Junin et C, [circa 1857]. Lithograph, coloured by hand, by Traviès, printed by Lemercier of Paris. Sheet size: 21 1/8 x 14 5/8 inches.
A fine lithograph by one of the greatest ornithological artists of the 19th century, from his finest work 'Les Oiseaux Les Plus Remarquables.'
The Great Bird of Paradise is the largest most spectacular member of a family of 40 species grouped under the name Paradiseidae. It is native to the Aru Islands a group of about 95 islands in eastern Indonesia, south west of New Guinea. The first published image of this species appeared in 1750 in George Edwards' Natural History of Birds (see vol.III, plate 110). Daniel Elliot, in his A Monograph of the Paradiseidae (1873) writes `For many years the Birds of Paradise have been known to all persons whose avocations called them to the Moluccas; and the earlier voyagers among those islands entertained strange views regarding these attractive creatures. Their beautiful plummage excited the admiration of the most indifferent person; and the strange tales related of them aroused the fears of the more superstitious of even the reckless mariners'.
Edouard Traviès was the first artist to successfully capture the character of individual birds. This together with the wealth of detail in the backgrounds, give great charm to his images and lift them above mere ornithological illustration, into the realm of fine ornithological art.
Traviès was born in Doullens in the Somme district of France in March 1809, the younger brother of the caricaturist Charles Joseph Traviès de Villier (1804-1859). Throughout his career he concentrated on natural history subjects, both in watercolour (he exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon between 1831 and 1866) and lithography, as here. Unlike a number of his contemporaries, he was an artist both with the brush and on stone, and the present lithograph is his own work. It comes from what is undoubtedly his greatest published work: 'Les Oiseaux Les Plus Remarquables par leurs formes et leurs coleurs. Scenes variees de leurs moeurs & de leur habitudes...' published simultaneously in Paris and London circa 1857.
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#3768 $3,500.00 
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© 2002-2005 Donald A. Heald
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