Item #JLR0695 A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement. John Gould, Richard Bowdler Sharpe.
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement
A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement

A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds WITH A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement

"THE TROCHILIDAE OF GOULD IS HIS MASTERPIECE, 
and must ever remain a feast of beauty and a source of wonder” 

THE MARCEL JEANSON SET 

 

Gould, John. A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds. Five volumes. London: Taylor and Francis for the Author, [1849–]1861.

     with

Gould, John and Richard Bowdler Sharpe. A monograph of the trochilidæ or family of humming-birds by John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum. Supplement. London: Henry Sotheran & Co., [1880–]1887.

 

Folio (21 ½” x 14 7/16”, 545mm x 366mm).
Vol. I: binder’s blank, A-B2 C-2F2 2G2(–2G2) 2H-2L2, χ-41χ1, binder’s blank [$1 signed]. 108 leaves, pp. [4] (title; blank; dedication to Victoria, Princess Royal; blank) i-v (3pp. subscribers, blank, preface) vi-cxxvii [3] (imprint, list of plates, blank), [82] (text, blank for each plate). [=cxxxiv, 82] With 41 hand-colored lithographs.
Vol. II: binder’s blank, [4] (title, blank, list of plates, blank) [150] (text, blank for each plate), binder’s blank. With 75 hand-colored lithographs.
Vol. III: binder’s blank, [4] (title, blank, list of plates, blank) [176] (text, blank (occasionally text) for each plate; 4pp. text for pl. 15, Trochilus colubris), binder’s blank. With 87 hand-colored lithographs.
Vol. IV: binder’s blank, [4] (title, blank, list of plates, blank) [160] (text, blank (occasionally text) for each plate), binder’s blank. With 80 hand-colored lithographs.
Vol. V: binder’s blank, [4] (title, blank, list of plates, blank) [154] (text, blank (occasionally text) for each plate), binder’s blank. With 77 hand-colored lithographs.
Supplement: binder’s blank, [8] (title, imprint, preface, blank, 2pp. contents, 2pp. list of plates) [200] (text, blank for each plate, plus 42 leaves without plates). With 58 hand-colored lithographs.
With 418 hand-colored lithographed plates (360 in the main work), heightened in gum arabic, with mineral pigments, oil pigments and varnish. Collated complete against the lists of plates and against Anker.

Bound in contemporary green morocco with a wide gilt and blind border. On the spine, five pairs of raised bands. Title gilt to the second panel, author and number gilt to the third. Triple gilt fillet to the edges of the boards. Gilt inside dentelles. Yellow-glazed end-papers. All edges of the text-block gilt. Each volume presented in a dark blue cloth clam-shell box.

Scuffed at the extremities. Sometime vertical creases to a few title-pages. Moderate foxing to the end-matter, with intermittent foxing, particularly to the plate descriptions. Bookplate of Marcel Jeanson completed in ink manuscript “7.045/T1[–T6]” to the front paste-down of each volume


John Gould (1804–1881) conceived, in the generation after Audubon, a massive project: to illustrate the world’s birds in a regal format. His multi-volume works on the birds of every continent but Africa are celebrated for their plates, after Gould and Gould’s wife Elizabeth, and by a quartet of the most celebrated natural history artists of the XIXc: William Matthew Hart, Edward Lear, Henry Constantine Richter and Joseph Wolf. The Trochilidae  (birds of Central and South America), which was begun in the middle of his career and the Supplement completed only after his death, is celebrated most enthusiastically by Sitwell in his Fine Bird Books: “The humming-birds are so beautiful in themselves that the ecstasy of delight into which they throw one should not let it appear that the Trochilidae, in aesthetics, is other than among the most beautiful of Victorian illustrated books… an incomparable catalogue and compendium of beauties… All in all, the Trochilidae of Gould is his masterpiece, and must ever remain a feast of beauty and a source of wonder” (pp. 39-40).

As with his Birds of Australia, Gould, working from London, was dissatisfied that he had been complete, such that over 30 years after beginning the project he sought to supplement it. He produced only the first part (1880) before his death. The project was shepherded through the press (the expense taken up by Sotheran, the printing still done by Taylor and Francis) by Osbert Salvin and completed by Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847–1909), a great ornithologist in his own right, who might be considered Gould’s heir.

Marcel Jeanson (1885–1942) was a French industrialist with a passion for hunting. He built on the collection of Henri Gallice d’Épernay, the heir to the house of Perrier-Jouët, whose passion for natural history art is enshrined in the Art-Nouveau flowers (drawn by his brother Octave) that encircle the Champagne’s bottle. Jeanson collected in particular the very finest ornithological watercolors; inclusion in his library is a distinction difficult to match. The present set was lot 38 in his Sotheby’s Monaco sale 16 June 1988 ($101,319).

Anker 177 & 182; Sitwell, Fine Bird Books p. 102 (“The absence of the Supplement does not mean that the original 5 volumes need by [sic] considered incomplete, in a collector’s sense.”)

Item #JLR0695

Price: $165,000

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