Spectacular Rare Old Original Bird Print of The Spectacled Cormorant, 1868

€ 1 850

Original antique · The actual sheet photographed · Certificate of authenticity on request · Sold unframed · Worldwide shipping from € 15 (rates)

Date: 1868
Sheet size: 58 × 46 cm (22.8 × 18.1 in)
Reference: BGI-01372

What the condition grades mean

Excellent: Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good: Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good: Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair: Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.

Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.

Condition

Very good, general age-related toning. Please review the images for further condition details.

About this sheet

Spectacled cormorant (Graculus perspicillatus), an original large folio lithograph with hand coloring from Daniel Giraud Elliot's The New and Heretofore Unfigured Species of the Birds of North America, published in New York for the author between 1866 and 1869. The plate is lettered "Graculus perspicillatus" and credits the drawing to J. Wolf of London, with the imprint "Bowen & Co. Lith. Phila."

A single large bird is shown at life size, perched on a grassy ledge in profile, its dark green head crowned with a wispy crest and its eye ringed in yellow, with a hooked bill and a patch of yellow skin at the base. The wing is a glossy plum-purple, and the flank carries a white patch. Behind the bird a sea in turquoise stretches to the horizon, and in the middle distance other cormorants sit on a rocky islet with a few gulls.

The spectacled cormorant was a bird of the northern Pacific, known from Bering Island and nearby coasts. It became extinct in the nineteenth century. Elliot's work focused on birds of the American West and Pacific coast that earlier ornithologists had not figured.