ABOUT THE PUBLICATION / EDITOR / ARTIST

John GOULD  (1804–1881) , Elizabeth GOULD (1804-1841), Edward LEAR (1812-1888)

Edward Lear, writer of nonsense rhymes, and artist and lithographer, began in 1830, to produce his own major work on parrots. This was Illustrations of the family of Psittacidae or Parrots. He sketched his birds from life at the Regent’s Park Zoo and drew them in reverse straight onto the lithographic stones, usually life size. With a subscribers’ list of 175, this must be seen as an amazing undertaking for a young man of 18. Unfortunately, Lear did not make any profit from the work, and stopped production after Part XII, but the collection of 42 hand-coloured lithographs was the first book of imperial folio lithographed birds published in Britain.

John Gould bought up the remainder of Lear’s stock but never completed the work. Lear taught Elizabeth Gould the art of lithography and assisted her with the plates for A century of birds... Gould did not acknowledge Lear’s contribution to these plates. Lear worked for six years with Gould on The birds of Europe. On some of the plates Lear’s signature is shown, but Gould persisted in putting his and Elizabeth’s names as artists and lithographers. This is shown as Del et lith to indicated the delineator or illustrator and the lithographer.

Reference:

Taken from preparations by Carol Cantrell as the basis for a talk to be presented to The Australian Museum Society on 21 and 23 April 1998.

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