Levaillant, François

Histoire naturelle des perroquets. Paris: Chez Levrault, frères, 1801-1805



2 volumes, folio (20 x 12 ¾ in.; 518 x 324 mm). 145 fine plates after Jacques Barraband etched and printed in color by Langlois under the direction of Bouquet, retouched by hand; slight marginal foxing in last leaves of first volume. Nineteenth-century salmon morocco, gilt roll-tooled floral border, spine richly gilt, gold-stamped title with imprint date "1807"[sic]; spines sun-bleached, edges rubbed, a few scrapes and scuff marks.

Ayer/Zimmer 392; Copenhagen/Anker 303; Fine Bird Books p. 90; Ronsil 1780; McGill/Wood 434; Nissen IVB 558; Yale/Ripley 170

First edition, a handsome copy.

Levaillant (1753-1824) was one of a new breed of naturalists at the turn of the nineteenth century who studied their subjects in their natural habitat. Son of the French consul in Dutch Guiana where he was born, he studied natural history at Metz, and spent the years 1781-1784 in South Africa collecting specimens in the service of the Dutch East India Company. Barraband (1767-1809) was a draftsman at the Gobelins textile factory, also painting porcelain which was exhibited at the Paris Salons from 1798 to 1806.

"After he had made himself Emperor, it was part of Napoleon's deliberate policy to initiate a series of magnificent publications that would vie with those undertaken on the orders of Louis XIV. These were sent as presents to crowned heads, men of science, and learned bodies, in evidence of the splendours of the Empire ... The works of Levaillant owe their sumptuous character to ... this impetus. His Histoire naturelle des perroquets is, unwittingly, a part of the glories of Napoleonic France" (Fine Bird Books).