- Title: Andigena Nigrirostris
- Author: Edward Lear & John Gould
- Date: 1834
- Medium: Hand-colored lithograph
- Condition: Very Good +
- Inches: 14 3/4 x 21 3/4 [Paper]
- Centimeters: 37.47 x 55.25 [Paper]
- Product ID: 262042
Image of a black-billed mountain toucan by Edward Lear (1812-1888) and John Gould (1804-1881). Lear was an illustrator and poet, known primarily today for his nonsense poetry and the limerick form which he helped popularize. He illustrated birds and other wildlife and also produced a handful of images to accompany Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poetry. Gould was an ornithologist and bird artist who 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 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 Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and Gould's work is referenced in Darwin's famous On the Origin of Species.