58 12th March 2011 antiquarian books Current values of a few
■ From birds, blooms and trees to fungi, fish and crabs
Ian McKay reports
Left: the uncoloured background to this illustration of a male ‘Lophophorus Impeyanus’ (the Himalayan or Impeyan Monal, a member of the pheasant family) marks it out as part of a first issue copy of the first of the great Gould bird books, A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains of 1831. In fact, John Gould’s input was quite limited, as the text was largely written by N.A. Vigors and the 80 colour plates were lithographed by his wife, Elizabeth, after her own drawings. In 19th century half green morocco gilt, this was one of the Goulds from Lord Hesketh’s Easton Neston library and it sold for an auction record £16,000.
THESE latest natural history sales show that while one does not see the quantity of top-end material at auction there once was, and past prices can sometimes be difficult to match, records are still possible for exceptional items and for material that is rarely seen at all. Books from the Hesketh Library feature prominently here, but this selection spreads a wider net and includes books from 14 salerooms in four countries.
The Birds The ornithological star turn of the
Hesketh library sale at Sotheby’s on December 7 was of, course, the Audubon Birds of America that sold for £6.5m (see report in ATG No 1971) but these were certainly not the only feathered high spots in the family library at Easton Neston. Sold at £100,000 was the ex-
Lamoignon-Phillipps copy in a period French red morocco gilt binding of the 1754, second edition of Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the
Right: only 126 coloured litho. plates (of 201), some of those broadsheets entirely loose, others stitched or loose in original pictorial or plain fascicle wrappers, remained to a copy of Etienne Denisse’s Flore d’Amerique... of c.1843-46 offered as part of the Hesketh library. However, this spectacular work is of the utmost rarity and this seriously defective example sold at £20,000. Denisse lived for many years in the French West Indies and was employed by the government in Guadeloupe to illustrate plants and collect horticultural specimens. The collection caused a sensation in botanical circles when first issued, but no complete sets can be traced in auction records. The only other set recorded in the last 40 years did run to 193 plates and sold for £2800 at Christie’s, but that was in 1977.
Bahama Islands, in which birds feature in the majority of the 200 coloured engraved plates. Another copy of this edition, again in a period French binding – this time of mottled calf – made $170,000 (£105,895) at Bonhams New York on February 13. A 1761-66, two-vol. first of Thomas
Pennant’s British Zoology, whose 132 coloured engraved plates are the first in any book attempting to list and portray all the British bird species (many of them life-size), took £15,000 as part of the Hesketh library, while a six-vol. first edition of Levaillant’s ...Oiseaux d’Afrique of 1796- 1812 brought £13,000. The latter, with its 300 coloured
engraved plates based on Levaillant’s observations and collections made whilst travelling in southern Africa, was bound in French blue morocco gilt of the period. In addition to the Himalayan collection
illustrated and described above, the Goulds in the Hesketh library included, at £62,000, a
...Humming-Birds of 1841- 61, the five volumes of the original issue handsomely bound in period green morocco gilt to preserve the 360 coloured litho plates of Gould’s masterpiece. A supplement issued in the 1880s by Richard
Bowdler-Sharpe, which naturally pushes the price up even more, was not present here. Gould had a personal collection of
some 1500 mounted humming birds, which at the time of the Great Exhibition was on show at the Zoological Gardens and attracted 75,000 visitors – among them an entranced Queen Victoria. The Hesketh copies of The Birds of
Great Britain and The Birds of Asia, the latter completed by Bowdler-Sharpe and William Hart after Gould’s death, were sold at £35,000 and £70,000 respectively, while a copy of Bowdler-Sharpe’s own Birds of Paradise of 1891-98, illustrated with 79 coloured litho plates and in a handsome contemporary binding of black morocco gilt, sold at £28,000. A Gould not among those seen at
Easton Neston provides the first sighting of 2011. This was a copy of the five-vol. Birds of Europe of 1832-37 at Cheffins of Cambridge on February 23. Finely bound in green morocco gilt, it had suffered some rodent damage and leather loss around the borders and edges of the bindings, and the last plate in Vol. II had been chewed along the fore-edge.
However, complete with all 448 coloured litho plates (and these mostly free of any scattered spotting and foxing) it sold at £46,000. In better condition, copies have sold at around £60,000 in recent times.
The Botanicals The botanical highlight of the Hesketh
sale at Sotheby’s was the group of 39 original watercolours for Redoute’s Les Roses which sold separately – but to the same telephone bidder – for a total of £2.7m (see ATG No 1971), but there were plenty of other attractions. Not all of them sold – Mary Lawrence’s
A Collection of Roses... of 1799 and Priscilla Bury’s Selection of Hexandrian Plants... of 1834, both of which were expected to reach £50,000 or more, were the most significant failures, but they were certainly not alone. Works by Martyn and Denisse that did
Left: sold for £19,000 as part of the Hesketh library at Sotheby’s was a fine copy of the first botanical book illustrated with colour-printed plates, John Martyn’s Historia plantarum rariorum of 1728-37. The 50 plates were engraved in mezzotint by Elisha Kirkall after paintings by Jacob van Huysum, Richard Sartorius and others and printed in one pull – in most cases in just two colours but sometimes more. The process produced a somewhat blurred effect – not always a drawback where hairy-leaved plants were concerned – and the plates were also finished off by hand. Only the ex-Lord Derby-De Belder copy has made more, having sold for £28,000 on its most recent return to auction at Christie’s in 1998.
sell well are described in accompanying caption stories, but other prices worth noting include £45,000 for a good copy of Thornton’s Temple of Flora with 28 coloured flower plates and three allegorical subjects, and an 1816-17 quarto edition of Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica, its 60 coloured stipple- engraved plates contained in a striking cathedral binding of red morocco gilt, which reached a record £12,000. Earlier works of recent months include
a copy of the Herbarium printed in Passau by Johann Petri in 1485. Two leaves from the copy seen at Hartung & Hartung
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