Thursday, May 12, 2011

Jean Theodore Descourtilz

I found this on Ebay this morning, beginning bid—close to $3000, I like it, but not *that* much! I thought it was interesting the way he viewed Hys though...

Jean Theodore Descourtilz’s work, Ornithologie Bresilienne ou Histoire des Oiseaux du Bresil…, focused on the exquisite birds of Brazil and described 15 new species as well as a new species.  Wood notes that Ornithologie Bresilienne was a “very important, fundamental, systematic treatise.”

The first edition was published by Waterlow and Sons for Thomas Reeve in London between 1852 and 1856.  Each remarkable chromolithograph was printed in color and finished by hand after Descourtilz.

Descourtilz worked for the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro. He was the son of French adventurer, botanist and naturalist Michel Etienne Descourtilz. Michel authored the work History of the Disasters in Saint-Domingue as well. The only other work that Descourtilz was known to have illustrated was his father's work Flore pittoresque et mĂ©dicale des Antilles.


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