The Wildfowl Paintings of Henry Jones (Limited First Edition, Signed)

A$680 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

First edition · Signed

OLNEY, Peter J.S. (foreword Sir Peter Scott; biography Nigel Sitwell; paintings Henry Jones). The Wildfowl Paintings of Henry Jones. London: Threshold/Harrap, 1987. Large oblong 4to (340 × 435 mm). Half navy Morocco leather and blue cloth boards. Spine with raised bands, lettered in gilt. Blue cloth solander case. 272 pp. Frontispiece and 60 full-colour plates, tipped in throughout. Appendix listing all bird paintings by Henry Jones in the possession of the Zoological Society of London. Bibliography. First edition. Limited edition of 350 numbered copies, signed by the author on the limitation page, this being number 94. Major Henry Jones (1838–1921) spent his active career as a British army officer and his retirement in pursuit of a different kind of discipline entirely. Returning to Welling, near Woolwich, in 1881, he became a regular presence in the bird room of what is now the Natural History Museum in Kensington, studying the Museum's specimen collections with the systematic attention of a naturalist rather than the casual interest of an amateur. The watercolour paintings he produced over the following decades were bequeathed at his death to the Zoological Society of London, where they remained, largely unpublished, until this monograph allowed them to be brought to the wider audience they deserved. The sixty paintings reproduced here cover the wildfowl of Britain and Europe: ducks, geese, and swans rendered with the particular accuracy of a man who had studied his subjec

• Binding: Hardcover

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