- Author: John Gould
- Date: 1838
- Medium: Hand-colored lithograph
- Condition: Very Good +
- Inches: 13.25 x 19.25 [Image]
- Centimeters: 33.7 x 48.9 [Image]
- Product ID: 262040
"Parotia Sexpennis" from "Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise and Ptilonorhynchidae, and Bower-Birds" by Richard Bowdler Sharpe and John Gould
Image of two six-plumed birds of paradise by John Gould (1804-1881), English ornithologist and bird artist. He published a number of monographs on birds, illustrated by plates that he produced with the assistance of his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists including Edward Lear, Henry Constantine Richter, Joseph Wolf and William Matthew Hart. He has been considered the father of bird study in Australia; the Gould League in Australia is named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and Gould's work is referenced in Charles Darwin's famous On the Origin of Species.