Carolina parrot, a hand-colored metal engraving from John James Audubon's "double-elephant" folio, The Birds of America, is on view in the Kroch Library "Beautiful Birds" exhibition.
A major new exhibition from Cornell Library's rare book collections opens this week in the Carl A. Kroch Library. "Beautiful Birds: Masterpieces from the Hill Ornithology Collection," along with a new web site, http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/ornithology, traces the history of 18th- and 19th-century ornithological illustration and showcases the work of John James Audubon, Mark Catesby, John Gould, Alexander Wilson and other notable bird artists of the period.
The exhibition will be on view in the Kroch Library exhibition atrium through Sept. 30. Gallery hours this summer are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.--5 p.m. During Cornell's Reunion weekend, the gallery also will be open Saturday, June 12, 10:30 a.m.--5 p.m.
"Beautiful Birds" traces the development of ornithological illustration in the 18th and 19th centuries and highlights the changing techniques -- from wood and metal engraving to chromolithography -- during that period. The exhibition features selected volumes from the hundreds of rare and important historical ornithology books that are part of Cornell Library's History of Science Collections, as well as artworks on loan from the personal collection of benefactors Kenneth E. and Dorothy V. Hill.
Guest curator for the exhibition is Jeanne White, retired associate director of Mann Library and former Hill Ornithology Collection bibliographer. According to White, the contrast in artists' styles reflects the two schools of bird art that vied with each other throughout the period. "The first, known as the 'museum school,' was concerned mainly with precision in recording details of the birds' characteristics," White said. "Whereas the other, the 'bird artist school,' added more lifelike characteristics, natural settings and sketches of nests, eggs and young to the detailed picture of the bird itself."
"Beautiful Birds" begins with a display of plates in books by three of the best known bird artists in early America, Mark Catesby (1683-1749), Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) and John James Audubon (1785-1851). Catesby, a botanist first and an ornithologist second, painted his birds with a fair degree of accuracy against a background of plants, departing from the stark style of his 18th-century contemporaries. By contrast, Wilson, known as the "father of American ornithology," produced excellent, precise, rigid, perched likenesses, which were modeled on stuffed skins. Audubon, who was the first artist to work from freshly killed specimens collected in the field, introduced the spirit of the living bird into his paintings and placed his figures in romantic but authentic settings.
Among the highlights of the 18th-century works in the exhibition are a volume from The Birds of America (1827-1838), Audubon's famous "double-elephant" folio, and a page from the artist's original handwritten manuscript for Ornithological Biography (18311839). Cornell has one of only 130 surviving complete sets of Audubon's four-volume The Birds of America. This Cornell set is particularly interesting, as it is one of 15 copies bound in London specifically for Audubon, after printing of his great work was completed in 1838.
One figure -- ornithologist and artist John Gould -- stands out in the world of 19th-century bird art. Gould, who considered himself first a businessman, was responsible for the publication of some 3,100 hand-colored lithographs in 43 volumes. Most were imperial folios, depicting birds in full size. Gould's handsome colorful plates dominate the portion of the exhibition that focuses on lithographs. Among the highlights are two magnificent plates of hummingbirds from his A Monograph of the Trochilidae, or Family of Humming-birds (1861) and Gould's original sketch of Beccari's pygmy parrots, with his handwritten comments in the margin, which is displayed with the final hand-colored lithograph from The Birds of New Guinea (1875).
In conjunction with the gallery exhibition, Cornell Library also has developed a web site that chronicles the history of bird art. Because of their size, fragility and value, only a small number of books from the Hill Ornithology Collection can be displayed in the gallery exhibition -- and, of course, each volume can be opened to show just one illustration.
The "Beautiful Birds" web site, http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/ornithology, provides not only a "virtual tour" of the exhibition, but also an online guide to the entire Hill Ornithology Collection. Visitors to the site can view the illustrations and accompanying text from the exhibition and then progress to see additional plates from the same books, as well as images from other books in the collection. Organized as a searchable database, the web site includes links to a timeline that traces the history of bird art, information about the artists and authors and bibliographic records of the books in the Hill Collection.
Produced in collaboration with Cornell's world-renowned Lab of Ornithology, the web site also offers links to bird songs from the lab's Library of Natural Sounds; "BirdSource," the lab's interactive web site for birders; and other online resources of interest to ornithology devotees. From "Beautiful Birds," viewers also can connect to other online exhibitions and the digital collections of Cornell Library. Of particular interest to admirers of bird art is the Louis Agassiz Fuertes database, which showcases the library's extensive collection of the notable 20th-century painter's artwork and personal papers.
For more information about the "Beautiful Birds" exhibition and web site, contact Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at 255-3530, or send e-mail to eaf3@cornell.edu.
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