Critter comforts
The Note has a soft spot for the work of John Gould, those intricate drawings of birds and animals that introduced much of the rest of the world to Australia’s exotic wildlife.
Most famous for Birds of Australia, this gardener and taxidermist who became a scientist and publisher also branched out of ornithology, for which he was best known, to cover mammalian species in the antipodes.
While travelling around Australia to generate material for his series on our native birds, Gould not only discovered 300 new species of birds but also created a huge body of work around the then relatively unknown mammal life of this continent.
Gould’s Mammals of Australia was a series of 182 lithograph plates, based on his sketches, sold by subscription between 1845 and 1863 to 125 recipients, mainly libraries and museums of the time as well as a smattering of royal houses.
The Note is not just fond of these works; we love the entrepreneurial story of man who climbed the ladder from apprentice gardener to become a fellow of the Royal Society. Even better, he made a living as a subscription-based publisher!
Trowbridge Gallery in Claremont has obtained a series from a European collection and has the individual prints on show from late next week, ranging in price from $600 for some bats through to $22,000 for WA’s emblem – numbats (pictured) – and $27,000 for Gould’s well known image of the now extinct thylacine.