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Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 50,000
AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES. Wood Ibiss. Plate CCXVI. Hand-colored engraved and aquatint plate from Audubon's double elephant folio edition of Birds of America. 970x645 mm sheet size; 15mm edge tear in upper left corner repaired on recto. A truly beautiful example; full sheet with binding marks on right edge. Watermarked: "JWhatman Turkey Mill 1834". London: R. Havell Jr., 1834
Audubon probably painted the preliminary sketch for this plate while in Louisiana in 1821. His careful handling of perspective in the full-sheet image lends the bird a larger-than-life attitude; its tail feathers and beak just break the rectangular frame of the image, while the background falls away unusually quickly from our position at water-level on the banks of the bayou. Thus the feeding bird is presented in a remarkably dominant pose and we are regarding it as if its prey. Low, A Guide to Audubon's Birds of America, page 128.
