Birds Drawn from Nature

Description:

First edition. Illustrated with finely hand-coloured plates, printed on india paper. Very rare. A volume of bird illustrations painted from life, which placed Jemima Blackburn (1823–1909) among the greatest ornithological illustrators. Beatrix Potter was an admirer of Birds from Nature, writing in her diary that she considered Bewick to be Blackburn’s ‘only possible rival’.

This edition was published with fewer plates than the author had intended due to an accident to the lithographic plates. To rectify the situation, an enlarged edition was published in 1868, including a second part with 22 additional plates. 7 copies of this edition were hand-coloured. It is likely that the coloured copies of the original edition were produced in as limited number as those of the 1868 issue.

Jemima Blackburn [née Wedderburn] (1823-1909) was a painter and illustrator, regarded as one of Scotland's first major women artists of the modern period (MacDonald, 113). John Ruskin thought of her, according to a letter from Effie Ruskin, 'as the best artist he knows' (Lutyens, 113-14). Blackburn had always held a keen interest in natural history, and Charles Darwin acknowledged that it was she who first recorded how the young cuckoo ejects its rivals from the nest (Darwin, Origin of Species, 6th edn, 1882). (ODNB).

"We have seen no such birds since Bewick's. We say this not ignorant of the magnificent plates by Selby, Audubon, Wilson and Gould" (The Scotsman).

Mullens & Swann p. 67; Nissen IVB 106; Zimmer p. 59: all for the standard issue with the plates uncoloured.

Condition

Folio (380x270mm), rebacked and recased in original publisher's lithographed boards, lightly soiled, corners restored. Letterpress leaves browned. Small marginal stain to the edge of the title-page and two plates, not affecting the printed area. Some foxing to plates, mostly light. The plates are charming and vivid. Housed in a recent buckram slipcase, gilt title to spine.