Apr 11, 2013 - Sale 2309

Sale 2309 - Lot 73

Price Realized: $ 288,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 250,000 - $ 350,000
AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES; and BACHMAN, JOHN. The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. Lithographed titles; letterpress plate lists; 150 hand-colored lithographed plates. Elephant folio, 679x542 mm, contemporary 1/2 calf, covers spotted and sunned, spine ends chipped, cover corners worn through, Volume 2 covers detached, Volume 1 rear and Volume 3 front free endpapers chipped and loose. New York, 1845-48

Additional Details

first edition in book form of Audubon's second monumental and enduringly popular work of natural history illustration, "the largest successful color plate book project of 19th-century America" (Reese). Nissen ZBI 162; Reese 36.
Titles and plate lists foxed and creased; varying foxing on plate guards; faint marginal foxing on around a quarter of the plates, small stain through outer margin of plates 12-14, minor marginal streaks or smudges on plates 22, 55, 63, 73, 79, 80, 114 and 135, small but noticeable marginal spot or spots on plates 11, 67, 76, 111, 121, 123, 125, 133, 141, and 150, plate 78 lightly toned and spotted, stripe on back of large-tailed skunk (plate 102) crudely painted.