Posted 3 years ago
ho2cultcha
(5051 items)
i found 12 of these Audubon prints today. a couple need a little fixing up. If i had had more time, i would have gotten more. The prints i found are Delafield's Ground Warbler, Blue-winged Teale, Yellow-breasted Rail, Scaup Duck, Common American Partridge, and Dusky Grouse. I believe that they were printed in 1840-44 by Bowen in Philadelphia.
You said original? Did you look at them under a loop? They're framed, so can't check for watermark.. still cool.
yes, these are original, hand-colored, stone lithographs. you can see it w/ a loup, although i don't want to take them out of their frames, so i can't see the watermark.
It says they are printed AND colored by J. T. Bowen of Philadelphia.
You can also check dimensions. I went through all this with my "Birds of America" piece.
here's a lot more info about the prints. from what i've read, mine are original octavos printed 1840-44 by Audubon during his lifetime. apparently, subsequent editions had backgrounds added in and were printed by different companies. These prints were also called simply 'miniatures'.
here's the link: https://princetonaudubonprints.com/collections/octavo-bird-originals?page=1
the very fancy matting and framing adds a lot to their value.
here it says that these were hand-colored and i'm finding slight differences in color as well. https://www.audubonart.com/shop/ocb-289-audubon-1st-ed-octavo-pl-289-common-american-partridge-8181#attr=
here's a lot more info: http://www.auduboninfo.net/articles/audubon_story.htm
the difference between the first and second editions is first, there is a rectangular background on all the 2nd editions forward. Also, only on the first edition was the fancy script used for the name of the bird. mine all have the fancy script with no backgrounds.