Elizabeth Gould | Malayan banded pitta, original watercolour

Elizabeth Gould.

Malayan banded pitta

Watercolour on wove paper (watermark “J Whatman Turkey Mill 1827”)

Unsigned

675 x 500mm.

Elizabeth Gould (1804–1841) was one of the most important ornithological artists of the nineteenth century.

Her importance overall outweighs her gender, but in terms of female artists, she was truly groundbreaking, and can be mentioned in the same terms as Sarah Stone or the earlier Maria Sybilla Merian.

She flourished at a time when there was a surge of interest in natural history, as new species were brought to Britain from all over the world, from specialist zoological voyages; these discoveries needed to be recorded and categorised, and Gould was at the very forefront of this effort. She was, for instance, a significant contributor of illustrations to Darwin’s Zoology of HMS Beagle which began publication in 1838.

Elizabeth met her husband John Gould through her brother Charles Coxon (they were both taxidermists). John Gould was to become the publisher of the greatest series of bird books ever produced, and, until her death in 1841, she was to be a major contributor of lithographs to his oeuvre. Some of her best work is to be found in Gould’s Birds of Europe (1832–1837, see lot 69); this outstanding book also contained lithographs by Edward Lear. Indeed, it seems that Lear was instrumental in teaching Elizabeth the art of lithography.

Perhaps because much of her short life was spent in the shadow of her husband, Elizabeth Gould’s contribution to the art of natural history has been overlooked. However, her reputation has recently been restored in Andrea Hart and Ann Datta’s Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould, published in 2023.

The present group of fine drawings (lots 64-68) comes from about 1829, the year in which she married, and predates any of her published work. Elizabeth Gould’s watercolours are mostly housed in institutional collections, and are rarely, if ever, seen at auction.

PROVENANCE:

Purchased by Thomas Barwick Lloyd Baker (1807-1886) of Hardwicke Court, Gloucestershire, promotor of reformatory schools and influential writer on crime and punishment; thence by family descent.