WOLF, JOSEPH.
Feathered Favourites. Twelve Coloured Pictures of British Birds. From Drawings.
London & Boston, Thomas Bosworth & Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1854. 4to. Bound in a nice later blue hcalf. w. gilt spine. Frontispiece w. mounting-strip. Occasional brownspotting, but an overall nice and tight copy. W. tissue-guards for all plates. Printed on heavy paper. (6), 54 pp + 12 plates
¶ The rare first edition of the second bird book illustrated with the use of chromolithography, by "one of the most sought-after of the bird painters of the nineteenth century" (Lysaught: 110.)
Joseph Wolf worked much together with Gould. He carried out many commissions for him, and it is his drawings that are behind many of Gould's most successful plates (i.e. the Greenland Falcon). He is considered one of, if not the, most important animal painters of the 19th century, and his relationship with Gould was lasting and close. "er hatte diesen bedeutendsten Tiermaler des 19. Jahrhunderts bald nach dessen Ankunft in England kennengelernt; und trotz Gould's vielfältiger Schrullen verband die beiden Männer eine lebenslange Zuneigung." (Nissen, p. 63). Among other things they made an ornithological trip to Norway together.
As one of the most prized drawers of birds of his time, he of course not only drew for Gould. He did a number of famous bird drawings for and by himself, and he drew for D.G. Elliot. Elliot's "A Monograph of the Phasianidae" from 1872 is dedicated to Wolf: "To Joseph Wolf, Esq., F.Z.S., etc. whose unrivalled talent has graced this work with its chief attraction and whose marvelous power of delineating animal life makes him unequalled in our time." (Lysaught: 120).
Wolf's special power lay perhaps in his eternal pursuit in portraying the bird at its most vigorous and liveliest, preferably in its own environment, and he worked very hard, -constantly re-sketching till perfection. His credo was: We see distinctly only what we know thoroughly" (Nissen, p. 64).
Nissen: 1009.
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