Two Buffon Hornbills, Senegal and Manila, Hand Colored Pair, circa 1775

About this sheet

A matched pair of original antique hand colored bird engravings from the Planches Enluminees of Buffon, sold together and not separately. Both are hornbills, lettered in French beneath the birds as the Calao a bec noir du Senegal and the Calao de Manille, and both carry the thin yellow framing line that is the signature of the series. These are large paper impressions, well above the standard sheet size of the work, with generous margins around the plate. They are two original sheets sold together as one lot, and the set is never split.

The Senegal bird stands on a stub of branch with its back to the viewer, the long black bill open and the tail feathers barred black and white, the whole set inside the thin yellow framing line that is the mark of the series; the caption beneath reads Calao a bec noir, du Senegal. The Manila bird faces the other way on its own stub of branch, with a pale gray head and breast, a dark brown back and a tail tipped in warm rust, the pink bill drawn in the same careful outline; its caption reads Calao de Manille.

The Planches Enluminees d'Histoire Naturelle were engraved by Francois Nicolas Martinet and issued in Paris between 1765 and 1783 as the plate volumes of Buffon's Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. A thousand and eight plates were produced, each colored by hand by a team working to a pattern sheet, and they remain the most important bird book of the eighteenth century. Martinet drew from skins and from living birds in the royal menagerie, and his outline is firm enough that the coloring sits inside it cleanly after two hundred and fifty years. A hornbill from West Africa and a hornbill from the Philippines, facing opposite ways on matching sheets, is about as satisfying a pair as the series can yield. Martinet plates on large paper are noticeably scarcer than ordinary copies and the extra margin gives a framer room to work. These two hang beautifully as a pair in a hall, a stairwell or either side of a doorway.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Handling soiling along the edges of both sheets. Scattered foxing in the margins of both sheets. All corners complete on every sheet. Shallow nicks along an edge of one of the two sheets.

These are original antique prints, not modern reproductions. 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.