The birds of Great Britain
A subscription folio of British ornithology issued in London by John Gould from 1862, with hand-coloured lithographs drawn by Gould and Henry Constantine Richter for wealthy collectors and naturalists. Birds stand in low habitat vignettes — chalk cliffs, tidal mud, tussock grass, nests with eggs and downy young — against pale blank skies, giving designers isolated bird figures, plumage patterning, and ground-level plant clusters on open white space.
