Barn Owl (Tyto alba) `24./ L'Effraie ou la Fressaie. (Buffon) 2/3 nature/ Strix Flammea (Gmelin)/ Europe'

Book Description

Paris & London: E. Savary & Cie and Gambert, Janin & Co., [circa 1857]. Lithograph, coloured by hand, by Traviès, printed by Lemercier of Paris. 21 1/8 x 14 5/8 inches. A fine lithograph by one of the greatest ornithological artists of the 19th century, from his finest work 'Les Oiseaux Les Plus Remarquables.' The slow, gentle, silent, gliding and swooping flight of the Barn Owl at dusk is one of the unforgettable sights of the bird world. Here an adult owl prepares to take flight with a field mouse grasped in one powerful talon, in the background the fading colours of the sunset and the muted image of a large church, perhaps the owl's nesting place. Edouard Traviès was the first artist to successfully capture the character of individual birds. This together with the wealth of detail in the backgrounds, give great charm to his images and lift them above mere ornithological illustration, into the realm of fine ornithological art. Traviès was born in Doullens in the Somme district of France in March 1809, the younger brother of the caricaturist Charles Joseph Traviès de Villier (1804-1859). Throughout his career he concentrated on natural history subjects, both in watercolour (he exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon between 1831 and 1866) and lithography, as here. Unlike a number of his contemporaries, he was an artist both with the brush and on stone, and the present lithograph is his own work. It comes from what is undoubtedly his greatest published work: 'Les Oiseaux Les Plus Remarquables par leurs formes et leurs coleurs. Scenes variees de leurs moeurs & de leur habitudes...' published simultaneously in Paris and London circa 1857.

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