William Matthews Hart (Irish, 1830-1908). After a drawing by John Gould.
Paradisornis Rudolphi. Finsch, from Monograph of the Paradisaeidae, or Birds of Paradise, 1891-98.
Hand-colored lithograph, published by Taylor & Francis for Henry Sotheran & Co., London, printed by Mintern Brothers, framed.
20 1/4 x 13 1/4in. (51.5 x 33.5cm/image).
32 1/2 x 25in. (82.5 x 63.5cm/frame).
Reference: Sitwell, Fine Birds Books 1700-1900, p. 142; Claus Nissen, Die Illustrierten Vogel-Buecher, no. 865.
This plate comes from Monograph of the Paradisaeidae, produced by the protege and longtime associate of the ornithological artist and entrepreneur John Gould (1804-1881), as a continuation of his splendid Birds of New Guinea and the Adjacent Papuan Islands (1875-88). William Matthew Hart drew most of the plates for Paradisaeidae and lithographed all of them. Hart had begun working for Gould as a colorist on Gould’s famous monograph on hummingbirds in 1851, and went on to become 'the most accomplished, if not the best, of Gould’s lithographic artists'.
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