- Title: Great Spotted Woodpecker
- Author: John Gould
- Date: 1832-37
- Medium: Hand-colored lithograph
- Condition: Very Good
- Inches: 13.25 x 19.5 [Image]
- Centimeters: 33.7 x 49.5 [Image]
- Product ID: 4278
Image of two great spotted woodpeckers and young 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.