[Yellow-crowned Amazon] `20. / Le Perroquet à tète jaune. (Buffon)/ Psittacus ochrocephalus (Gmelin) / Ameriquel'

Book Description

Paris & London: Ledot and Gambart, Junin & Co., [circa 1857]. Lithograph, coloured by hand, by Traviès, printed by Becquet of Paris. 16 5/8 x 22 3/8 inches. A fine lithograph by one of the greatest ornithological artists of the 19th century, from his finest work 'Les Oiseaux Les Plus Remarquables.' A bird portrait showing this central and south American parrot landing in the stem of an umbrella palm. The bird looks back towards the viewer with a wary eye and lets out a cry. Because of the wide colour variation the species is difficult to establish with certainty, but this appears to be a Yellow-headed Amazon (Amazona ochrocephala oratrix). Its Latin name given in recognition of its amazing gift of mimicry. 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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