Antique Bird Engraving of a White-Crowned Amazon

Name: Antique Bird Engraving of a White-Crowned Amazon
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-13362-18
Price: 270 USD
Availability: InStock

$270

€240 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

Buy now Ask a question

Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.

Maker: Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Kind: Birds, Plants & Natural History
Size: 26 × 19.7 cm (10.2 × 7.8 in)
Condition: Good. Wear consistent with age and use. General age-related toning. Minor wear and soiling, blank verso. Please study image carefully.
Places: Brazil
Reference: BG-13362-18

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.

Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.

Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured. Delivery and import charges.

About this piece

The white-fronted Amazon parrot, an original copper engraving from Buffon's Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, the great natural history issued with the Cabinet du Roi between 1749 and 1804. The sheet is lettered "L'Amazone à Tête Blanche" and marked "Tom. VI." and "Pl. IX. pag. 212" at the top. The artist is credited as De Seve at lower left and the engraver as Cath. Haussard at lower right.

The parrot perches on a gnarled tree stump beside a rock, its body drawn in dense scale-like feathering, with a pale cap and bare patch around the eye and a long, graduated tail. A few leaves hang at the right, and soft clouds and a low horizon of rocks close the composition. The plate is uncolored, printed in black on laid paper.

Buffon's Histoire Naturelle, in 44 volumes, was an ambitious project of the Enlightenment that tried to set down everything then known about the natural world and to spread that knowledge in popular form.

★