Arnold Zwicky's Blog

From the British Library on Facebook:

  (#1)

We never miss a chance to share a penguin image. This one is from A History of the Birds of New Zealand, 1873.

(Hat tip to Michael Palmer.)

The two species in the illustration are Eudyptes chrysocome, the Southern rockhopper penguin, and Eudyptula minor, the little / blue / fairy penguin.

And the 1873 volume is by Sir Walter Lawry Buller (1838-1906), with stone-plate lithographs by J. G. Keulemans.

On Buller, from Wikipedia:

Sir Walter Lawry Buller (9 October 1838 – 19 July 1906) was a New Zealand lawyer, naturalist, and dominated in the field of New Zealand ornithology. His book, A History of the Birds of New Zealand, first published in 1873, was published as an enlarged version in 1888 and became a New Zealand classic.

The 1873 volume had not only penguins, but of course also kiwis drawn by Keulemans:

  (#2)

Soon the reprints were published under the title Buller’s Birds of New Zealand. Two editions (of many):

  (#3)

  (#4)

On to the amazingly prolific illustrator Keulemans. From Wikipedia:

Johannes Gerardus Keulemans (J. G. Keulemans) (8 June 1842 – 29 March 1912) was a Dutch bird illustrator. For most of his life he lived and worked in England, illustrating a large number of the best-known ornithology books of the nineteenth century.

Keulemans published 4,000-5,000 illustrations, in volumes about the birds of New Zealand, Ceylon, South Africa, Europe, Australia, Madagascar, and Egypt; Cumberland, Lancashire, and Devonshire; and more. And in volumes about hornbills, thrushes, petrels, emus, ibises, and more.

This entry was posted on April 25, 2017 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Art, Books, Language and animals, Penguins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.