Travies original watercolor of an Osprey

TRAVIES, Edouard (FRENCH, 1809 - 1870).
"Osprey".
Watercolor, pencil and gouache on paper.
Signed lower right: "Edouard Travies".
ca. 1855.
For Les Oiseaux Plus Remarquables Par Leurs Formes et Ieurs Couleurs: Paris and London: c. 1857.
17 1/4" x 13 1/4" sheet, 31" x 24" framed.

The work of Edouard Travies represents the pinnacle in French ornithological illustration. His exceedingly rare and delicately rendered watercolors place him amongst the best of France’s nineteenth-century scientific artists.

Travies was born in Doullens, in the Somme district of France, in March 1809. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was a natural history artist both with the brush and on stone, exhibiting in watercolor at the Paris Salon between 1831 and 1866 and created extraordinary hand-colored lithographs, several of the most significant ornithological publications of the period.

Travies' original watercolors were often preparatory works for engravings and lithographs, and his original compositions are among the best portraits of birds ever painted. However, no printed version approaches the profound quality and assurance with which the artist rendered these watercolors created for what is undoubtedly his most significant published work: Les Oiseaux Les Plus Remarquables par leurs formes et leurs coleurs. Scenes variees de leurs moeurs & de leur habitudes... [The most remarkable birds for their form and color...] published simultaneously in Paris and London in 1857. Many of the illustrations describe species of birds native to Central and South America. All show the birds associated with flowering plants indigenous to their habitats, such as orchids and passion flowers.