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JOSEPH WOLF (1820-1899)
14 original watercolours for The Poets of the Wood and Feathered Favourites. [London: 1853-1854.]
Exceptional collection of Joseph Wolf watercolours of birds, collected by the noted ornithologist Henry Dresser. The birds depicted are:
1. Blackbird
2. Blackbird and nest: original of plate 8 in Poets of the Wood
3. Redstart
4. House sparrow: original of plate 1 in Feathered Favourites
5. Wren in winter
6. White Wagtails: original of plate 6 in Feathered Favourites
7. Greenfinch
8. Yellow-hammer
9. Woodlark: original of plate 9 in Feathered Favourites
10. Green woodpecker: original of plate 5 in Feathered Favourites
11. Cuckoo: original of plate 1 in Poets of the Wood
12. Cuckoo
13. Swan: original of plate 10 in Feathered Favourites
14. Turtle doves and nest: original of plate 1 in Poets of the Wood.
Dresser notes on the verso of the front free endpaper that all these watercolours, except number 12, were purchased by Richmond from Wolf for publication in Poets of the Wood and Feathered Favourites (although the publisher for these works is normally given as T. Bosworth). However, plates 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8 were seemingly never published, and Dresser states that number 12 was given to him by Wolf himself. A full account of Dresser's purchase of them in a City bookshop, and an explanation of their history, appears in Dresser's hand on verso of front free endpaper.
14 highly finished circular watercolours on paper, each mounted to a diameter of 80mm (all recently remounted in acid-free mounts), bound in a slightly later red morocco binding for H.E. Dresser, covers with wide gilt folaite roll-tooled border, gilt lettering to upper cover, gilt spine, turn-ins and edges, marbled endpapers (extremities fractionally rubbed). Provenance: Henry Eeles Dresser (ornithologist, 1938-1915; description of his purchase of them in a City bookshop, and an explanation of their history in Dresser's hand on verso of front free endpaper).