Astrarchia Stephaniae, Finsch. [Stephanie's Astrapia]from Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise, and Ptilonorhynchidae, or Bower Birds .First edition.

London: Taylor & Francis for Henry Sotheran & Co., London: 1891-98. Original handcolored lithograph on rag paper. 562 x 391mm. Very good. Matted. Rectangular line around image offset from a previous mat. Claus Nissen, Die Illustrierten Vogel-Buecher, no. 865; Sachervell Sitwell, Fine Bird Books, 1700-1900, Atlantic Monthly Press, p. 142..This plate comes from Monograph of the Paradiseidae, produced by two protégés and longtime associates of the ornithological artist and entrepreneur John Gould (1804-1881), as a continuation of his splendid Birds of New Guinea and the Adjacent Papuan Islands (1875-88). William Matthew Hart drew most of the plates for Paradiseidae and lithographed all of them, while Richard Bowdler Sharpe found subscribers to underwrite the publication and wrote the text. Hart had begun working for Gould as a colorist on Gould’s famous monograph on hummingbirds in 1851, and went on to become “the most accomplished, if not the best, of Gould’s lithographic artists” (Tree). Sharpe, an ornithologist and curator of birds at the British Museum, was a teenage bird enthusiast when he met Gould, who became his mentor. Both men worked on Gould’s Birds of New Guinea. Experise by Sylvie COLLIGNON, SFEP45, rue Sainte Anne - 75001 PARIS France