The Parrots, Die Papageien - Les Perroquets: The Complete Plates, Samtliche Tafeln Toutes les planches

by Edward Lear, Rainer Willmann, Solphia Willmann

Bought for large sums of money from travellers and merchants, parrots were the object of much fascination to 19th century European aristocracy for their colorful liveries and most of all for their ability to speak, sing, and imitate the human voice. Completed in 1832 when he was just 20, Edward Lears set of 42 hand-colored lithographs entitled Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots comprise one of the first collections entirely dedicated to parrots in the history of scientific illustration; they include different African, Australian, and American species bred by the collections subscribers, amongst whom were the artists patrons Sir William Jardine and Prideaux John Selby. The young and prodigiously talented Lear (1812-1888) made his drawings from live parrots, the collection was reproduced in only 175 precious sets With a brief zoological introduction and written portraits of each bird, TASCHEN reprint brings Lears parrots back to life for all to admire.

32 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2008

About the author

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised.
His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to make illustrations of birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; and as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems.
As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.