Splendid Species: Gould's Birds of Australia

John Gould (1804-1881) was one of the world’s most renowned experts in the study of birds and it was his devotion to the classification and description of around 200 new Australian bird species which established his professional reputation in the 1830s. Gould received no formal education, but was keenly interested in wildlife from an early age. In 1822, having worked as a gardener, he moved to London to take up taxidermy, then an increasingly lucrative trade. In 1827 he became the Curator and Preserver of the newly formed Zoological Society.

Gould was also a successful businessman who produced more than 40 published volumes during his lifetime, containing over 3,000 coloured plates, with The Birds of Australia considered to be his most famous work. Gould’s marriage to Elizabeth Coxen (1804-1841) in 1829 saw the beginning of a great collaborative partnership.

The 1830s was a period in which publishing, philosophy and the natural sciences were meeting in both middle-class English homes and entrepreneurial opportunity. Besides his talents as an ornithologist and entrepreneur, Gould’s ability to organise and oversee the output of artists and crafts people ensured the natural history artworks illustrating his prestige publications were brightly and skilfully coloured and of the highest quality. This approach held special appeal for their Victorian audience.

The plates of The Birds of Australia were printed using lithography – a relatively new technique for book illustration in England in the 1830s. Working from Gould’s rough sketches and under his constant supervision, the artists – including his wife Elizabeth Gould, Edward Lear, H.C. Richter, William Hart, and Joseph Wolf – made the drawings and watercolours which were then copied onto the lithographic stones from which the prints were produced. After the required numbers of prints were made the stones were wiped clean or destroyed to ensure the exclusivity of the prints.

The Birds of Australia was published in 36 parts issued four times a year (until 1847) with the last seven parts appearing in 1848. The cost of producing the prints was offset by subscription for the substantial fee of £115 (2017: £9,529.00 / AUD$16,885.00) which meant that only a few hundred of the wealthiest people and institutions in England, Australia and Europe could afford to own them. This also accounts for the rarity of this landmark publication to this day.

Gould was 'highly gratified' to be the first to record the extraordinary habits of the Satin Bower-bird (Vol 4 plates 10-11) including an illustration of their unusual thatched 'bower' structures - which he described as the bird's 'playing-ground or hall of assembly' - as one of the few double-sized plates found in The Birds of Australia.  Unsure about the bower's exact purpose at the time, it was later identified as being an essential element of the male's courtship ritual. Gould was also keen to promote the Lyre-Bird (Vol 3 plate 14) as the avian emblem of Australia, being 'not only strictly peculiar to Australia, [and], as far is yet known, to the colony of New South Wales ... perhaps no bird has more divided the opinion of ornithologists, as to the situation it should ocupy in the natural system ...' (Gould, 1848) 

The Goulds left Australia in April 1840 and the first part of The Birds of Australia appeared in December 1840. Elizabeth died in August 1841, following childbirth,  and before the completion of the project. The remaining 595 illustrations were finished by Henry Constantine Richter, a young artist who would work with Gould for the next forty years.

FL4647121

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John Gould was devastated by his wife’s unexpected and untimely death, writing in the Preface to The Birds of Australia:

"At the conclusion of my “Birds of Europe,” I had the pleasing duty of stating that nearly the whole of the plates had been lithographed by my amiable wife. Would that I had the happiness of recording a similar statement with regard to the previous work; but such, alas! It is not the case, it having pleased he All-wise Disposer of Events to remove her from the sublunary world within one short year after our return from Australia, during her sojourn in which country an immense mass of drawings, both ornithological and botanical, were made by her inimitable hand and pencil "… (Gould 1840-1848, 25)

Gould named one of the most beautiful Australian species of finch - the Gouldian Finch- Erythrura (Chloebia) Gouldiae- after her:

"It was with feelings of the purest affection that I ventured, in the folio edition [Birds of Australia], to dedicate this lovely bird to the memory of my late wife, who for many years laboriously assisted me with her pencil, accompanied me to Australia, and cheerfully interested herself in all my pursuits."

After Gould’s death in 1881, his stock and the contents of his work rooms were purchased by London book dealer Henry Southeran. The "pattern" set of The Birds of Australia was acquired at an unknown date by the Technological College in Sydney and passed into the Library's collection in 1947. But just how such a significant resource for the study of the Gould's ornithological and artistic enterprise ended up in Australia remains a mystery.