William Matthew Hart (1830-1908)

THE MONOGRAPH OF THE TROGONIDAE (1835-1838) AND THE 2ND EDITION (1858-1875) The Trogans are brightly coloured, mysterious, reclusive and sedentary birds which live in dense tropical forests, mainly in South America. Elizabeth Gould illustrated all the plates in the first edition except the Trogon gigas which was copied by Edward Lear from an illustration by Levaillant. In the first edition Gould recorded thirty-four species of trogon, twenty-three were American, ten Indian and one African. In the second edition, twenty years later, Gould updated the descriptions, the plates were redrawn, and newly discovered species were added to make a total of forty-seven plates - thirty-three from America, eleven from India and two from Africa. The majority of the plates were by Richter but the final ones, including plates 22 and 4a, for which lot 157 and 158 are the original watercolours, were by Hart. The second edition was dedicated to the Duke of Argyll, an eminent statesman with a keen interest in ornithology

细节

William Matthew Hart (1830-1908)
White-tailed Trogon
Trogon chionurus
Trogon viridis Linnaeus
pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic on Whatman paper
21 1/8 x 14 1/8in. (537 x 359mm.)

出版

J. Gould, The Monograph of the Trogonidae, 2nd edition, 1875, pl.22

拍品专文

The first specimens of the snow-tailed trogon were sent from the area opened up by the Panama Railway, by the trackmaster James McLeannan to the American ornithologist, George Newbold Lawrence (1806-1895). The birds remained with Lawrence for some time and it was not until 1870 that they were named and described by the English zoologist, Dr. P.L. Sclater and Osbert Salvin.
The male's tail is black-tipped purple with distinctive outer feathers of pure white. The female lacks the male's glossy sheen and is dark grey with white outer tail-feathers barred with black. Both sexes have orange-yellow underparts.
In the watercolour two males and a female are depicted. The finished plate portrays only two birds, the female and a male seen from the back. A faint brown pastel sketch of a fourth trogon's head, probably by Gould, is in the top left side of Hart's watercolour.
DISTRIBUTION: Southern Central and western South America. The birds depicted belong to the subspecies Trogon viridis chionurus which occurs in eastern Panama, western Columbia and western Equador