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L’Ara Tricolor. Pl. 5. by Jacques Barraband

£525.00 Approx $662.04, €612.6

Code: 54253



Date: 1801-1805

(Cuban macaw) .  Engraving printed in colours and finished by hand.  Overall size in conservation grade mount card and back with decorative v groove : 45.7cms x 54.8cms ; image size ( paper size, floating in the mount ) : 272mm x 353mm.  Slightly ragged edges bottom and right margins else very good condition.

Jacques Barraband (1767/68-1809) worked for the Gobelin factory and was recognized as the best ornithological artist of his time owing to his attention to  accurate detail and use of colour. Langlois' skillful engravings of Barraband's original watercolour and gouache drawings reproduce their delicate lines and superb draughtmanship. "After he had made himself Emperor, it was part of Napoleon's deliberate policy to initiate a series of magnificent publications that would vie with those undertaken on the orders of Louis XIV. Theses were sent as presented to crowned heads, men of science, and learned bodies, in evidence of the splendours of the Empire The works of Levaillant owe their sumptuous character to this impetus. His Histoire naturelle des perroquets is, unwittingly, a part of the glories of Napoleonic France" (Fine Bird Books by Sacheverell Sitwell  p. 15).