Pheasant Drawings

Kingston Upon Hill: Allen Publishing Company. Fine. 1988. Hardcover. "The Monographs of the Pheasants by Daniel Giraud Elliot (1872) is among the finest of all illustrated bird books. This is a facsimile reproduction of the 95 original drawings and the 79 colour plates from Elliots Pheasant. The 95 charcoal field sketches and 79 colour plates are reproduced here by offset lithography. Preface by Elanor Maclean the Head Librarian of the Blacker-Wood Library of McGill University, Montreal. Introduction by David M Lank. Half bound in fine leather with raised bands and tooled in gold leaf, enclosed in a slipcase and placed in a custom wooden box. Columbier folio (17 ¼ x 24 inches) the colour plates are Royal quarto (10 x 13 inches). Limited to 275 copies and 10 proof copies. This being 119 of 275 copies. Published in Spring 1988 at £ 950. Book and slipcase in fine condition, original prospectus laid in. Bookplate of Steve Bales in the front. Wooden display case in near fine or better condition, with a photo of Joseph Wolf, some features and the below description: In 1872 there appeared a two volume folio, A Monograph of the Phasianidae, or Family of the Pheasants. It had been written and financially underwritten by an extraordinary American Naturalist, Daniel Giraud Elliot. Of the 81 lithographed plates, 79 had been hand-coloured after the original sketches of Joseph Wolf, acknowledged as the greatest animal painter of his age. The true joy of Elliots Pheasants, starts and ends with Wolf's sketches, drawn not with hesitant strokes and brittle twigs of charcoal, but with boldness and genius, and with what Palmer, in his Life of Joseph Wolf, called good sturdy stakes that fill the fingers and will not snap under the strain of sudden inspiration; . Palmer understood the importance of the sketches: It is unfortunate that the finest of these (charcoal drawings) have not been seen are not likely to be seen by the public, for it is on them that his fame as an artist should indisputably rest. Upon the best of them, any competent art critic would doubtless agree that it would rest securely for all times; . This facsimile reproduction of those very sketches in part redresses the wrong Palmer so rightly pointed out. Elliot recognized fully what Wolf meant to the book when he chose to dedicate the ; Pheasants; : To my friend, Joseph Wolf Esq. F. Z. S. Etc. , whose unrivalled talent had graced this work with its chief attraction, and whose marvelous power of delineating animal life renders him unequalled in our times; David M Lank"; Elephant Folio 23" tall; Signed by Illustrator .