Antique French de Buffon Bird Engraving, L'Autruche, Hand Colored, 18th Century

Period
1770 to 1783, French

Size
9¼ x 11½ inches, framed

A hand colored copperplate engraving of the ostrich, from Buffon's Histoire naturelle, drawn by Jacques de Sève and engraved by Dufour.

The bird is shown striding, the body carried high on bare legs, the neck raised and the small head turned in profile. The plumage is worked in grays and browns with the loose barbless feathers of the tail and wing drawn as separate strands. A palm stands at the right and mountains close the distance behind, and a low rocky foreground carries the bird's weight.

The paper has warmed to ivory with scattered foxing through the margins. The frame is painted blue gray with a yellow ochre inner fillet, distressed to bare wood at the corners and along the rails. Sold as found.

Historical Context
The ostrich had been known in Europe since antiquity and was still being described from a handful of menagerie birds when Buffon wrote. Its feathers had been a luxury trade good out of North Africa for centuries, and the plume trade would later drive the birds close to collapse in the wild before farming took over in the nineteenth century. The palm in the background is doing the work of a caption, telling a reader where the bird comes from.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, ran the Jardin du Roi in Paris and gave the rest of his life to the Histoire naturelle, thirty-six volumes published between 1749 and his death in 1788, with eight more added afterward by his successors. He wrote it in French and aimed it at any educated reader, and the first edition sold out in six weeks and went on into English, German, Swedish, Italian and Russian. The nine volumes on birds were written with Guéneau de Montbeillard, and Jacques de Sève drew close to two thousand plates across the whole work.