Bluebreast or Bluethroat on a Forked Branch, Antique Bird Print, 1896

An original wood engraved bird plate, colored by hand, captioned "BLUEBREAST." A single bird perches on a forked lichened branch, its body angled to the right and the head turned right in profile, with the tail slanting down to the lower right. A white stripe runs over the eye, and the crown and back are dark gray brown. The throat is silvery white, scaled in gray, with a red spot at its center, and below it a black band and then a red band cross the upper breast. The underparts are pale buff, and red shows at the base of the tail. The branch is washed gray green and ends in a bare pinkish broken stub.

The caption is engraved in spaced capitals below the picture: "BLUEBREAST." There is no number or other lettering above the picture, and no engraver's credit within it. Morris's Bluebreast is the bird now called the Bluethroat, Luscinia svecica.

This plate comes from the fourth edition of A History of British Birds by the Reverend Francis Orpen Morris (1810 to 1893), rector of Nunburnholme in Yorkshire, who wrote the text. The edition was issued in six volumes by John C. Nimmo of London, and this plate belongs to the third volume, whose title page is dated 1896 and states that the plates are colored by hand. The wood blocks for the plates of the work were engraved by Benjamin Fawcett (1808 to 1893) of Driffield in Yorkshire. Each plate combines an engraved black key block with a printed gray tint, finished by hand in watercolor.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.