Gould's New Guinea Birds | THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY SET

Gould's New Guinea Birds | THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY SET GOULD, John (1804–1881) and Richard Bowdler SHARPE. The birds of New Guinea and the adjacent Papuan islands, including many new species recently discovered in Australia. By John Gould, F.R.S. completed after the author’s death by R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.L.S. &c., zoological department, British Museum London: Henry Sotheran, 1875–1888. Here is what AI says it’s worth: $187,350. Cost: Sotheby’s New York 16 December 2022, lot 69 - $138,600. Five volumes. Folio (21 ½” x 14 11/16”, 545mm x 373mm). Vol. I: with 56 hand-colored lithographed plates. Vol. II: with 58 hand-colored lithographed plates. Vol. III: with 72 hand-colored lithographed plates. Vol. IV: with 59 hand-colored lithographed plates. Vol. V: with 75 hand-colored lithographed plates. With 300 hand-colored lithographed plates, mostly by William Matthew Hart; collated complete against the tables in each volume. Bound in contemporary deep-green morocco, with a wide gilt border. On the spine, five raised bands. Title gilt to the second panel. Author and number gilt to the fourth panel. Imprint gilt to the tail. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards. Gilt inside dentelle. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block gilt. Rubbed at the edges, with some patches of wear along the lower edges and fore-corners. A little soiling to the plate of “Arses insularis” (vol. II, pl. 43), else an uncommonly fresh set. Bookplate of the Library of the Carnegie Museum to the front paste-down of each volume, completed in mechanical stamp with an accession number of 1862, and the accession date in manuscript: “November 22nd 1910”. John Gould (1804–1881) conceived a massive project: to illustrate the world’s birds in a regal format. He is best known for his multi-volume works on the birds of every continent but Africa. Following the success of his 1837 Birds of Europe, Gould with his wife Elizabeth, most unusually for the times, to Australia. Gould was never fully satisfied with the Birds of Australia, and the present work is in part a supplement, given how many new species continued to be discovered in Oceania more broadly. The Birds of New Guinea is the most geographically ambitious of Gould’s works because it chronicles the avifauna of many distant islands, which as Darwin had shown contributes fantastically to biodiversity. Indeed, the ambition of the work was such that at the time of Gould’s death a little less than half of the 25 parts — the work was issued over 13 years to subscribers — had been completed. His assistant Richard Bowdler Sharpe, some 40 years his junior, completed the final 12 parts, and had at his disposal nine of his ten daughters, who worked as colorists on Hart’s bright plates. Indeed, the birds of paradise so prominent among the species described in the present work were the subject of a major two-volume work by Sharpe alone, also published by Sotheran. The Carnegie Museum (of Natural History) was established in 1895 by the famous son of Pittsburgh, Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was a devoted Darwinist, and so books such as Gould’s paralleled the museum’s collection of specimens illustrating evolution and global biodiversity. The present set was sold by the museum to raise funds to care for their 22-million-strong collection of specimens and objects: Sotheby’s New York 16 December 2022, lot 69. Anker 181; Ayer/Zimmer, pp. 262–263; Nissen IVB 373; Sauer 27; Sitwell, Fine Bird Books, p. 78.

Estimation:€134,130.15

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