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Edward Lear’s album of parrots contains the finest illustrations of the family ever produced: it is also a stylistic monument in the history of the depiction of birds. Lear turned his hand to many things in the course of his long life – landscape painting, nonsense verse, and the illustration of birds and reptiles. The nonsense verse is Lear’s most widely known achievement; but the limericks and their companion sketches are above all the inventions of a landscape painter who still preserved a hand attuned to the forms of reptiles and birds.
Lear’s work as a natural history draftsman lasted little more than the decade of the 1830s, until his eyesight became too weak for the detail of feathers and scales. The Psittacidae is his finest achievement. Lear conveyed with telling sympathy the carriage of a bird, the grasp of the claws, the tilt of the head, its grave, curious, or quizzical expression. Lear was exceptionally sensitive to the structure and function of features such as the parrot’s beak and the turtle’s jaws (the latter is evident in his lithographs of turtles and tortoises in Thomas Bell’s A Monograph of the Testudinata, also available in an Octavo Edition).
Lear’s Psittacidae was drawn, lithographed, hand-colored, and published on a shoestring by the artist himself in a tiny edition. It has always been a rare and costly book. Now this Octavo Edition reproduces this masterpiece of ornithological illustration in stunning detail.
The original book imaged for this digital edition:
21 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches (546 x 368 mm)
Lear’s work as a natural history draftsman lasted little more than the decade of the 1830s, until his eyesight became too weak for the detail of feathers and scales. The Psittacidae is his finest achievement. Lear conveyed with telling sympathy the carriage of a bird, the grasp of the claws, the tilt of the head, its grave, curious, or quizzical expression. Lear was exceptionally sensitive to the structure and function of features such as the parrot’s beak and the turtle’s jaws (the latter is evident in his lithographs of turtles and tortoises in Thomas Bell’s A Monograph of the Testudinata, also available in an Octavo Edition).
Lear’s Psittacidae was drawn, lithographed, hand-colored, and published on a shoestring by the artist himself in a tiny edition. It has always been a rare and costly book. Now this Octavo Edition reproduces this masterpiece of ornithological illustration in stunning detail.
The original book imaged for this digital edition:
21 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches (546 x 368 mm)
Reversed Renderings
While supportive details may have been drawn from secondary sources or from his own imagination, Lear’s primary subjects were, whenever possible, studied from life. After many hours of close observation, when he was satisfied that he had captured both the physical appearance and characteristic postures of the living birds he wished to include, he carried his drawings to the printing studio of Charles Hullmandel in Great Marlborough Street. There Lear redrew them (in reverse) on lithographic stones in order to create the plates for his book. With Hullmandel’s assistance, he printed his plates in black and white, then employed professional colorists to replicate the pigments from a set of colored “pattern plates” he prepared for them to copy. The best of the resulting prints conveyed the subtle colors and animated personalities of parrots in ways rarely attempted, and never before achieved.
While supportive details may have been drawn from secondary sources or from his own imagination, Lear’s primary subjects were, whenever possible, studied from life. After many hours of close observation, when he was satisfied that he had captured both the physical appearance and characteristic postures of the living birds he wished to include, he carried his drawings to the printing studio of Charles Hullmandel in Great Marlborough Street. There Lear redrew them (in reverse) on lithographic stones in order to create the plates for his book. With Hullmandel’s assistance, he printed his plates in black and white, then employed professional colorists to replicate the pigments from a set of colored “pattern plates” he prepared for them to copy. The best of the resulting prints conveyed the subtle colors and animated personalities of parrots in ways rarely attempted, and never before achieved.
Lear’s Limericks
Although they are the things for which he is best remembered today, Lear’s limericks were not the creations with which he wished to be identified. It was a source of frustration to Lear that the whimsical nonsense verses, originally written and illustrated to entertain Lord Derby’s children and grandchildren at Knowsley Hall, gained far more notoriety than the serious work to which he devoted most of his career. Lear at first refused to claim authorship of A Book of Nonsense, seeking to avoid having such frivolous writings undercut his reputation as a naturalist, travel writer, and professional artist. In the first and second editions of the book, he assumed the pseudonym Derry Down Derry (“who loved to see little folks merry”). It was only after hearing others, including Lord Derby, credited with his work that Lear admitted authorship in the third edition, published in 1861.
Although they are the things for which he is best remembered today, Lear’s limericks were not the creations with which he wished to be identified. It was a source of frustration to Lear that the whimsical nonsense verses, originally written and illustrated to entertain Lord Derby’s children and grandchildren at Knowsley Hall, gained far more notoriety than the serious work to which he devoted most of his career. Lear at first refused to claim authorship of A Book of Nonsense, seeking to avoid having such frivolous writings undercut his reputation as a naturalist, travel writer, and professional artist. In the first and second editions of the book, he assumed the pseudonym Derry Down Derry (“who loved to see little folks merry”). It was only after hearing others, including Lord Derby, credited with his work that Lear admitted authorship in the third edition, published in 1861.
Austere Audubon
Of Lear’s contemporaries, only the American artist John James Audubon claimed to have painted directly from life. A more accurate description of his method might be that he observed living birds in the wild, then drew them from memory and from freshly killed specimens. While Audubon often had to paint around the clock to capture the recent vitality of his deteriorating specimens, Lear knew he could always return to his living subjects to complete their unfinished portraits at his convenience. With such advantages, Lear’s paintings often have a relaxed, natural appearance. The best of his parrots crane their necks, ruffle their feathers, and climb deliberately on their branches, but they never exceed the limits of believable action. By contrast, Audubon’s birds seem frozen in time, their poses quite literally fixed in space before the artist ever began to work.
Of Lear’s contemporaries, only the American artist John James Audubon claimed to have painted directly from life. A more accurate description of his method might be that he observed living birds in the wild, then drew them from memory and from freshly killed specimens. While Audubon often had to paint around the clock to capture the recent vitality of his deteriorating specimens, Lear knew he could always return to his living subjects to complete their unfinished portraits at his convenience. With such advantages, Lear’s paintings often have a relaxed, natural appearance. The best of his parrots crane their necks, ruffle their feathers, and climb deliberately on their branches, but they never exceed the limits of believable action. By contrast, Audubon’s birds seem frozen in time, their poses quite literally fixed in space before the artist ever began to work.
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