4 - Purple Finch (by W. H. Lizars)
Hand-colored engraving with etching. Variant 2, J Whatman Turkey Mill 1827 watermark. Engraved by W. H. Lizars of Edinburgh, Scotland. Beautiful original colors ! Audubon painted these birds in 1824 near the Great Lakes. State Bird of New Hampshire. Entire sheet backed by a thin Japan paper. A short horizontal crease in the white area between the top two birds (difficult to notice. It is an imperfection in the original Whatman paper). Mild mat tone outside the platemark.
Audubon wrote: "The song of the Purple Finch is sweet and continued, and I have enjoyed it much during the spring and summer months, in the mountainous parts of Pennsylvania, where it occasionally breeds, particularly about the Great Pine Forest, where, although I did not find any nests, I saw pairs of these birds flying about and feeding their young, which could not have been many days out, and were not fully fledged. The food which they carried to their young consisted of insects, small berries, and the juicy part of the cones of the spruce pine."
4 - Purple Finch (W. H. Lizars)
Hand-colored engraving with etching.
Variant 2, J Whatman Turkey Mill 1827 watermark.
Audubon painted these birds in 1824 near the Great Lakes.
State Bird of New Hampshire.
Havell Edition, Birds of America.
The Havell edition prints are considered as the most desirable of all of Audubon's original art work. During the period 1827 to 1838, Audubon produced the images for his monumental "The Birds of America" (BOA) with the assistance of engravers William Lizars of Scotland for the first few prints and then with Robert Havell, Sr and Jr., in England. These are copper plate engravings (435 plates) printed on high quality wove paper with a watermark (either J. Whatman or J. Whatman Turkey Mill, followed by the year). These plates (commonly referred to as the "Havell Edition") are known for the exquisite and unsurpassed beauty and details in the images, and the fresh vibrant colors. Audubon printed only a small number of the full sets of the BOA (between 175 to 200 copies). Most of these full sets are in museums, and a few in private hands, with only a few loose prints available for purchase by the general public. In the 19th century, some of the owners of these original prints, understandably given the time period and not anticipating how rare Audubon's Havell prints would become, did not pay the utmost attention and care in preserving these precious copperplate engravings; as a result, some prints got trimmed right down to the platemarks (to save on framing expenses), or got destroyed due to exposure to the elements (bleaching from exposure to bright sunlight, smog, smoke etc), and didn't survive or retain the original pristine condition. The rarity of these Havell Edition prints becomes very quickly obvious especially when one is searching for a particular bird print - - they are very difficult to find indeed!
In the 2010 Sotheby's Auction, the Lord Hesketh 4-volume set of Audubon's The Birds of America sold for a record-breaking $11.5 million!
All the plates listed in this Havell edition gallery are original full sheets with the Whatman watermark, unless otherwise noted in the description. Please ask for a detailed "Condition Report" for any particular print you might be interested in, before purchasing.
