The Great Green Parrot of the West Indies – Hand-Colored Engraving, ca.1770

Name: The Great Green Parrot of the West Indies – Hand-Coloured Engraving, ca.1770
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-13983
Price: 770 USD
Availability: InStock

$770

€690 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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

Date: 1770
Kind: Birds, Plants & Natural History
Size: 37.5 × 23.5 cm (14.8 × 9.3 in)
Period: Colonial America
Places: The West Indies
Reference: BG-13983

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 Great Green Parrot of the West Indies, an original hand-colored copper engraving published in Nuremberg by Johann Michael Seligmann in his Sammlung verschiedener ausländischer und seltener Vögel, the German edition of the bird plates of George Edwards. The date given is around 1770.

The bird is perched on a bare, lichen-grown branch above a small patch of grass and ferns, in full profile. Its plumage is green and yellow, with a blue patch about the eye and red markings on the head and breast, red and blue in the wing, and a pale, hooked beak. The title is engraved at the top in German, "Der grose grüne Papagey aus West-Indien," with "Tab. LVII" at the upper right. Beneath the picture are the Latin name "Psittacus viridis major, Occidentalis" and the French "Le Grand Perroquet Verd des Indes Occidentales," along with the credits "G. Edwards ad vivum delin.," "J.M. Seligmann excudit" and the engraver's credit at the lower right, read as Leitner.

George Edwards (1694 to 1773) drew his birds from life, and Seligmann's collection re-engraved Edwards's work, with that of Mark Catesby, for continental readers.

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