Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots is an 1832 book containing 42 hand-coloured lithographs by Edward Lear. He produced 175 copies for sale to subscribers as a part-publication, which were later bound as a book. Lear started painting parrots in 1830 when he was 18 years old, and to get material for his book he studied live birds at the London Zoo and in private collections. The latter included those of Edward Smith Stanley, later 13th Earl of Derby, who had a large menagerie at Knowsley Hall, and Benjamin Leadbeater, a taxidermist and trader in specimens. Lear drew onto lithographic plates for printing by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, who was known for the quality of his reproductions of fine art.
Although the book was a financial failure, Lear's paintings of parrots established his reputation as one of the best natural history artists of his time. It found him work with John Gould, Stanley and other leading contemporary naturalists, and the young Queen Victoria engaged him to help her with her painting technique. Parrots was a forerunner to the major volumes of bird paintings by Gould, and Lear's serious work has influenced bird specialists like William T. Cooper, Elizabeth Butterworth, and Walton Ford.
Lear continued with his nature painting for some years, but from about 1835 he became concerned about his failing eyesight, and increasingly concentrated on his nonsense works and landscape painting, although he may have contributed to the illustrations for Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle.
Background
Early scientific works on birds, such as those of Conrad Gessner, Ulisse Aldrovandi and Pierre Belon, relied for much of their content on the authority of the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and the teachings of the church,Birkhead (2011) pp. 18–22.Birkhead (2018) pp. 11–12. and included much extraneous material relating to the species, such as proverbs, references in history and literature, or its use as an emblem.Kusukawa (2016) p. 306. The arrangement of the species was by alphabetical order in Gessner's , and by arbitrary criteria in most other early works. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Francis Bacon had advocated the advancement of knowledge through observation and experiment, and the English Royal Society and its members such as John Ray, John Wilkins and Francis Willughby sought to put the empirical method into practice,Birkhead (2018) pp. 34–38. including travelling widely to collect specimens and information.Birkhead (2018) pp. 47–50.
The first modern ornithology, intended to describe all the then-known birds worldwide,Birkhead (2018) p. 218. was produced by Ray and Willughby and published in Latin as (Three Books of Ornithology) in 1676,Birkhead (2018) p. 225. and in English, as The Ornithology of Francis Willughby of Middleton, in 1678.Birkhead (2018) p. 236. Its innovative features were an effective classification system based on anatomical features, including the bird's beak, feet and overall size, and a dichotomous key, which helped readers to identify birds by guiding them to the page describing that group.Birkhead (2018) pp. 219–221. The authors also placed an asterisk against species of which they had no first-hand knowledge, and were therefore unable to verify.Birkhead et al. (2016) p. 292. The commercial success of the Ornithology is unknown, but it was historically significant,Birkhead (2018) p. 239. influencing writers including René Réaumur, Mathurin Jacques Brisson, Georges Cuvier and Carl Linnaeus in compiling their own works.Charmantier et al. (2016) pp. 377–380.Johanson et al. (2016) p. 139.
George Edwards was a leading British naturalist and illustrator in the 17th century. He was the librarian to the Royal College of Physicians with access to their collection of 8,000 books, and he used these, together with stuffed and live animals, to produce illustrated publications. His four-volume A Natural History of Uncommon Birds (1743–1751) and its three supplements covered more than 600 natural history topics, and his publications enabled Linnaeus to name 350 bird species, including many type specimens.Lederer (2019) pp. 52–57.
During the early 19th century, several ornithologies were written in English, and Edward Lear's main contributions to the development of bird painting were to concentrate on a single bird group, in his case the parrots, paint mainly from live birds rather than stuffed specimens or skins, and use a large page size.Lederer (2019) pp. 106–109.Uglow (2017) pp. 45–50. Lear was not the first to produce an illustrated parrot monograph. French artist Jacques Barraband created 145 images for François Levaillant's (1801–1805).Peck (2020) p. 52. Lear's book had an immediate effect, including its impact on John Gould's five-volume Birds of Europe, which was published between 1832 and 1837.McGhie (2017) pp. 97–100.
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was born on 12 May 1812 in Holloway, North London, the penultimate (and youngest to survive) of perhaps 21 children of Jeremiah and Ann (née Skerrett) Lear.Peck (2021) pp. 10–12. Jeremiah was a stockbroker who in 1816 defaulted to the London Stock Exchange to the tune of £2150 11s. 1d. in the economic turmoil following the Napoleonic Wars. The family left their home, Bowmans Lodge, and Edward was raised by his eldest sister, also named Ann, 21 years his senior. Partly because he suffered from epilepsy, bronchitis and asthma, Ann acted as a mother to him from when he was four until her death when he was almost 50 years old.Uglow (2017) pp. 12–16.
Ann and another of Edward's sisters, Sarah, were both competent artists and taught their brother to draw and paint. From 1827, aged about 15, Edward was taking paid work, including medical illustrations. His first major commission was to illustrate an account of the scientific discoveries of a Royal Navy expedition to the Pacific. HMS Blossom, commanded by Captain Frederick W. Beechey, had a successful three-year voyage (1825–1828), visiting California, the Pitcairn Islands, Tahiti, and previously largely unknown parts of northwest North America. Lear painted 12 plates of birds and two of mammals for The Zoology of Captain Beechey's Voyage, probably in 1829, when he was aged 17, or in 1830. Long delays by another contributor, the keeper of zoology at the British Museum, Edward Gray, meant that the book was more than ten years out of date when it was finally published in 1839, several other expeditions having taken place in the interim.Peck (2021) pp. 35–38.Peck (2021) p. 187.
Research
Lear's plan was to produce 175 copies of a large folio book, larger than any European nature painter had previously used. He met and became friends with John James Audubon, who had just published his 1827 double elephant-size The Birds of America, and this book may have inspired him to also choose a large format.
The publication was to be sold by subscription as fourteen parts, each priced at ten shillings, a total cost of £7. Its full title as published was Illustrations of the family of Psittacidæ, or parrots: the greater part of them species hitherto unfigured, containing forty-two lithographic plates, drawn from life, and on stone, as printed on the title page of the book. The first subscribers included a friend, Mrs Anne Wentworth, and her sisters and daughter, followed by leading naturalists, including the London Zoo's Nicholas Vigors and the president of the Linnean Society, Edward Smith-Stanley, later 13th Earl of Derby. Subscribers from the aristocracy included the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Egremont, and the Duke of Northumberland and his Duchess. The London Zoological Society and the Linnean Society also subscribed as organisations.
Lear's early sketchbooks include sketches and drawings of parrots, including a citron-crested cockatoo, a watercolour of two green parrots, and another of a blue macaw's head with two of its feathers, but for his project he needed access to live birds. In June 1830 he was given permission by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) to sketch at London Zoo, and he also had access to the zoo's museum in nearby Bruton Street. As well as skins and stuffed birds, the museum also had aviaries with some live birds. Although other artists were not granted similar access, Lear was introduced to the ZSL by the well-connected Mrs Wentworth, who was interested in both art and natural history.Uglow (2017) p. 39.Uglow (2017) pp. 67–68. He also painted parrots owned by Stanley and Vigors, and saw several species, including Baudin's black cockatoo, in the collection of Benjamin Leadbeater, a taxidermist and trader in specimens.Taylor (2012) p. 137. When he could not view live birds, Lear resorted to Gould's stuffed specimens.
Production
Lear's illustrations were produced using lithography, in which artists copied their paintings onto a fine-textured limestone slab using a special waxy crayon. The block was then treated with nitric acid and gum arabic to etch away the parts of the stone not protected by the wax. The etched surface was wetted before adding an oil-based ink, which would be held only by the greasy crayon lines, and copies were printed from the stone.McGhie (2017) pp. 139–140.Uglow (2017) pp. 52–54. The printed plates were hand-coloured, mainly by young women.
Lear drew directly on to the limestone instead of first making a painting and then copying it onto the stone, thus saving him considerable expense. Although this method was technically more difficult, drawing directly onto stone could give a livelier feel to the final illustration, and was favoured by some other contemporary bird artists such as John Gerrard Keulemans. Lear largely taught himself lithographic techniques, using stones hired at the studio of his printer, Charles Joseph Hullmandel. Hullmandel was the author of The Art of Drawing on Stone (1824), and the leading exponent of lithographic printing in Britain.Peck (2021) p. 41. His colourists used egg white to give a sheen to the parrot's plumage and a shine to the bird's eye. Lear designed wrappers for each part, but changed the design when he was granted permission to dedicate his book to Queen Adelaide, consort of King William IV.
Lear struggled with the costs of producing his book, despite erasing his drawings as soon as he had the necessary 175 copies, to reduce the expense of hiring the lithographic blocks. He ran out of funds when he had printed only twelve of the intended fourteen parts, with 42 plates and no text. He sold only 125 subscriptions, and not all his subscribers actually paid what they owed.Peck (2021) p. 57. To help with funds, Lear worked for Gould from 1832 to 1837, illustrating his five-part Birds of Europe and teaching lithography to Gould's wife, Elizabeth. Lear still owed money for his parrots book, and in March 1833 he sold the remaining 50 copies and the rights to the plates to Gould for £50.Uglow (2017) pp. 58–59.
Reception The sheer cost of producing his book meant that the final two parts were never completed and it was a financial failure, although Lear had anticipated this possibility, saying "Their publication was a speculation which — so far as it made me known & procured me employment in Zoological drawing — answered my expectations — but in matters of money occasioned me considerable loss."
The first two parts were published on 1 November 1830, and Lear, still only 18, was promptly nominated for membership of the Linnean Society by Vigors and the zoologists Thomas Bell and Edward Bennett. Audubon bought a copy of the final bound book, despite its cost and his own limited funds,Peck (2020) p. 95. William Swainson asked for duplicates of two plates that he could have framed and hang next to his Audubon paintings, and Prideaux John Selby said the plates were "beautifully coloured & I think infinitely superior to Audubon's in softness and the drawing as good".