Selby Vol 1, Pl. 42, Common Swallow, House Martin, Swift

Enliven your walls with this antique original Selby Vol 1, Pl. 42, Common Swallow, House Martin, Swift engraving!

Depicted at life-size on creamy 20 ⅝” × 25 ½” paper, this avian species is captured with remarkable color and detail. Own a piece of history today with this original 19th-century engraving!

About Illustrations of British Ornithology

Prideaux John Selby’s large-scale engravings were the first work of British ornithology to depict many birds in the size of life. Comprising two volumes with a total of 222 engravings, Illustrations of British Ornithology was published in Edinburgh in 19 parts from 1821 to 1834. Created during the same period that John James Audubon was publishing The Birds of America, both Audubon and Selby employed the Scottish engraver W. H. Lizars. A highly skilled engraver himself, Prideaux John Selby employed W. H. Lizars’ services only for printing and coloring his own exquisite copper plates. Copies vary depending on the folio. Many of the engravings were colored by Daniel McNee. In some folios, all 222 engravings were hand-colored, in others only 218 of the engravings were.

Twenty-six of the plates were drawn by Prideaux John Selby’s brother-in-law, Admiral Mitford, and the rest were executed by Selby, who obtained most of the specimens for the drawings himself. Prideaux John Selby engravings are printed on elephant folio size Whatman paper that is watermarked with the date the paper was made. John James Audubon also used Whatman paper for the Havell edition of The Birds of America.

About Prideaux John Selby

The artist-naturalist Prideaux John Selby (1788—1867) was born in Northumberland, England to a prominent family. As a child, he exhibited a strong interest in ornithology, and by the time he was 12 or 13 years old, he had composed his first illustrated notes on common British birds. Prideaux John Selby became a member of the Wernerian Natural History Society in Edinburgh at an early age. His interests in natural history extended into forestry and entomology, but his devotion to the subject of ornithology was primary.

To learn more about Selby Vol 1, Pl. 42, Common Swallow, House Martin, Swift, email us at [email protected] or check out our articles A Comparative Analysis of the Bird Prints of Prideaux John Selby and His Contemporaries and What is an Engraving?

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