Background:

These beautiful hand-colored Bird prints are based on illustrations by Edouard Traviès (1809-1865), one of the best known French natural history artists of the first half of the 1800s.  Working primarily in watercolors, Traviès was known primarily for his Bird illustrations.   The prints accompanied the Ornithology section of a French edition of Georges Cuvier's (1769-1832) Animal Kingdom.  Each of Traviès's brilliant plates depicts two species of Birds and contains anatomical insets of the Birds shown.  The engravings were done by Guyard Fournier among others.