By John James Audubon
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
Artist: John James Audubon (American, 1785-1851)
Title: "Townsend's Cormorant" (Plate 418, No. 84)
Portfolio: The Birds of America, First Royal Octavo Edition
Year: 1840-1844
Medium: Original Hand-Colored Lithograph on wove paper
Limited edition: approx. 1,200
Printer: John T. Bowen, Philadelphia, PA
Publisher: John James Audubon and J.B. Chevalier, New York, NY and Philadelphia, PA
Sheet size: 10.13" x 6.5"
Image size: 4.38" x 5"
Condition: Light toning to sheet. Some light foxing and small areas of discoloration. Remnants of mounting tape from previous framing on verso. The white background was recently also hand-colored. In otherwise good condition with strong colors
Notes:
Provenance: private collection - Nashville, TN; acquired from a gallery in Nashville, TN. Lithography and hand-coloring by American artist John T. Bowen (1801-c.1856). Comes from Audubon's famous seven volume portfolio "The Birds of America", First Royal Octavo Edition (1840-1844), which consists of 500 hand-colored lithographs.
Based on a composition probably painted in London in 1838, from a specimen obtained near the mouth of the Columbia River.
Brandt's cormorant is a strictly marine bird of the cormorant family of seabirds that inhabits the Pacific coast of North America. It ranges, in the summer, from Alaska to the Gulf of California, but the population north of Vancouver Island migrates south during the winter.
To make 'The Birds of America' more affordable and widely available, in 1839 John James Audubon began the first octavo edition, a smaller version of the folio which was printed and hand-colored by J. T. Bowen in Philadelphia. Employing a new invention, the camera lucida, the images were reduced in size, rendered in intermediate drawings by John James Audubon and his son John Woodhouse, and then drawn onto lithographic stones. These miniatures exhibit a remarkable amount of attention to quality and detail, as well as a meticulous fidelity to the larger works. Some compositional changes were made in order to accommodate the smaller format. Like the Havell edition, John James Audubon’s first...
Category
Victorian 1840s Art
MaterialsWatercolor, Lithograph