About this sheet
This antique photogravure shows two figures on one sheet: the upper, lettered Fig. I, depicts a Goosander (Common Merganser), standing upright on the ground with its body held at a steep angle, while the lower, lettered Fig. II, shows a Smew, resting in a lower posture. Rather than being small, the upper bird is a notably large and elongated seaduck, and both are represented here as females or immature males with distinct crested heads and specialized serrated bills. It is plate CXCV from Charles Stonham’s The Birds of the British Islands (published circa 1908), beautifully drawn by Lilian M. Medland and printed in monochrome. The sheet carries the plate number in the lower right margin, Medland's initials in the lower right of the art, and fractions indicating the precise scale at which each species is reproduced.
The plate comes from The Birds of the British Islands by Charles Stonham, issued in five volumes in London by E. Grant Richards between 1906 and 1911 with three hundred and eighteen plates. Every figure was drawn by Lilian Marguerite Medland, one of the small number of women who made a living as a bird artist in Britain at the turn of the century, and her monogram appears on the sheet. Medland worked from skins and from living birds, and the plates are notable for the quiet accuracy of their posture and for the soft modelling of plumage that a monochrome process could carry. She later emigrated to Australia, where she illustrated the standard works on that country's birds, and her British plates have been sought after ever since.
Stonham's plates are printed in monochrome rather than colour, and that is the point of them. Freed from the flat washes of a hand coloured bird book, Medland could model a bird in tone alone, and the result reads more like a drawing than a coloured plate. A single sheet hangs extremely well in a plain frame with a generous mount, and a run of three or four from the same volume makes one of the most satisfying groups in natural history printing, quiet enough for a hallway, a study or a dining room and entirely at home beside photographs.
Light handling wear to the top right corner; clean, straight edges. Narrow margins. Margins free of foxing.
This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.
