Kingfisher, Bee-Eater and Sunbirds, Four Antique Sonnerat Plates, 1806

This set of four original antique copper engravings, Plates 104, 105, 106 and 107 from Sonnerat's Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, is sold as one set. They are four original sheets sold together as one lot, and the set is never split. Plate 104 shows a violet kingfisher of the Coromandel Coast perched on a branch, the heavy dagger bill and compact body shown in profile. Plate 105 shows a yellow bee-eater of the Coromandel Coast on a branch, the slender curved bill and pointed wings clearly drawn. Plate 106 shows two sunbirds on one sheet, numbered 1 and 2, one from Malacca and one from the Cape of Good Hope, each perched on a flowering spray. Plate 107 shows three sunbirds of China on one sheet, numbered 1 to 3, the red backed, the whistling and the gray, each on a slender spray. Each sheet carries its engraved plate number at the upper right, the artist and engraver credits at the foot of the image and its caption lettered beneath.

These plates belong to the Collection de planches pour servir au Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, published in Paris by Dentu in 1806. It is the plate volume that accompanies Sonnerat's account of the years he spent in India, China, Malacca, Madagascar and the islands of the Indian Ocean as a naturalist and naval commissary in the service of France. The images are copper engravings, printed in black on laid paper with a clear plate mark, the lettering cut below each image in the same plate. No color was applied, which is how the volume was issued.

The bird plates run for nearly thirty sheets through the middle of the volume and cover the Coromandel and Malabar coasts, Gingi and Pondicherry, Malacca, China, Madagascar and the Cape. Each bird is drawn at the full height of the plate against a plain ground, usually on a branch or a rock, with the plumage worked up line by line in the engraving. All four sheets are the same size and the same orientation and come from one volume of one book, which is why they are offered as a set and not one at a time. What Sonnerat produced was not a studio compilation. He was in India for seven years, based at Yanam and at Pondicherry, and he went on to Canton, to Malacca, to Madagascar and to the Cape of Good Hope. The drawings he brought back were engraved in Paris by Jean-Baptiste Marie Poisson, Jean-Jacques Avril, Desmoulins, Fessart and Milsan, among the better reproductive engravers working in the city at the end of the eighteenth century.

Noticeable uneven toning on some sheets. Marked handling soiling along the edges of all four sheets. Scattered light foxing in the margins of all four sheets. Slight wear at the corners of three of the four sheets.

These are original antique prints, not modern reproductions. This item is sold unframed.