JOHN GOULD AND CHARLES DARWIN

John Gould (1804-81) was born in Lyme, England, in 1804, the son of a gardener. With no formal education, at the age of 14, he followed his father into the same trade. In his spare time, he learnt how to preserve and mount specimens and traded some of them with the scholars at nearby Eton College. After a short time as a gardener in Yorkshire, he settled in London as a taxidermist. In 1827 he received a position at the Zoological Society as curator. His first book on the birds of the Himalayas was published in 1832 when he was just 26 years old. Gould employed the new technology of lithography. His wife Elizabeth being responsible for the lithographic illustrations and the drawings onto stone.

In October 1836 Charles Darwin returned from his five-year circumnavigation of the globe and sought Gould’s help in the description and identification of the species he found on his travels. Indeed, Gould contributed significantly to Darwin’s future theories as the two of them were particularly fascinated by a dozen finches captured on different islands in the Galapagos Islands. Their beaks varied in size, and analysis of this led to the theory of adaption and evolution. Gould even presented descriptions of the Galapagos finches and mockingbird specimens at the Zoological Society in January 1837. Darwin credited Gould in Darwin’s ‘Zoology of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle’ for the sketches stating that they were ‘taken from sketches made by Mr. Gould himself and executed on stone by Mrs. Gould’.

AUSTRALIA

Gould however became pre-occupied himself with the birds of Australia. The continent had barely been settled for 50 years and information on its ornithology was sparce. Some species had been recorded in the works of Arthur Phillip in 1789, John White in 1790, George Shaw between 1800 and 1826, along with the various French voyages in the Pacific. The most comprehensive was John Lewin’s ‘Birds of New South Wales’, 1822, which contained only 26 plates.

Gould highlights the situation in the Preface to the ‘Birds of Australia’. “In the absence, then, of any general work on the Birds of Australia, the field was comparatively a new one, and of no ordinary degree of interest, from the circumstances of its being one of the finest possessions of the British Crown, and from its natural productions being as remarkable for the anomalous nature of their forms, as for their beauty, and the singularity of their habits.” Gould began work on publishing from extant material in 1837 but soon recognised that there was not sufficient material to meet his standards and abandoned it.

Gould’s wife Elizabeth had two brothers in Australia, and he developed the idea of travelling there to undertake a survey of the avifauna. As he states in the Preface he “determined to proceed to Australia and personally investigate the habits and manners of its birds in a state of nature”. Mathews described it as “a hazardous and difficult task, but one that made him forever famous”.

Gould left for Australia on 16 May 1838 accompanied by his wife, son John Henry, a nephew, two servants, and a very capable assistant in John Gilbert (1812-45). Whilst Gould continued to collect specimens in the east, he sent John Gilbert in February 1839 for the recently formed Swan River Colony in Western Australia. From there he travelled through Queensland and South Australia. He would later be tragically killed by an aboriginal speer in Queensland in 1845. This highlights the dangers inherent in his work. Two other individuals who collected specimens for him also died, one murdered and another killed in an accident.

Gould received assistance from an extensive range of contacts. In Tasmania they were assisted by the then Governor Sir John Franklin of later Arctic fame. In June 1839 he left on tour from Adelaide in the company of the Captain Charles Sturt (1795-1869) before returning to Hobart. George French Angas (1822-86) supplied him as did John MacGillivray whist surveying on H.M.S. Rattlesnake. The Surveyor General of New South Wales T. L. Mitchell and Lieutenant George Grey on the ‘Beagle’ whilst exploring the northwestern regions of Australia also supplied specimens. These contacts helped record 300 entirely new species.

PUBLICATION

Gould and family returned to England in August 1840 and within 3 months the first part of the ‘Birds of Australia’ was published. There followed 36 parts containing 600 plates between 1840-48. A ‘Supplement’ with a further 5 parts was issued between 1851-69 with a further 81 plates. Because so much time was spent in the field the text and plates of the work are considerably more accurate and detailed than his earlier works.

It didn’t stop there as Gould also applied such attention to detail in the production of the plates. In the preface to Gould’s ‘Birds of Great Britain’, 1862-73, he records his pride: ‘Many of the public are quite unaware how the colouring of these large Plates is accomplished; and not a few believe that they are produced by some mechanical process or by chromo-lithography. This, however, is not the case; every sky with its varied tints and every feather of each bird were coloured by hand; and when it is considered that nearly two hundred and eighty thousand illustrations in the present work have been so treated, it will most likely cause some astonishment to those who give the subject a thought.’

It is known that Gould only published 250 copies of ‘The Birds of Australia’. Surviving examples are severely diminished by the fact that it was issued in parts and only a portion were bound. Of those at least 10 copies are known to have been broken up for their plates in the last 50 years or so. Of those remaining several are in institutions leaving extremely few in private hands.

In conclusion Gould undertook his work at an exciting time in Australian history. The exploration of the interior was reaching its peak and above else it was a period of extensive co-operation between all individuals. The scientific collaborations involve exploration and not least the scientific advances of Darwin’s theory of Evolution. These wide contributions are readily identified not only in the descriptions but also in the naming of species. The ‘Birds of Australia’ highlights the contributions across disciplines more than any other and elevates the work out of one of just natural history into one of the greatest scientific contributions of the nineteenth century.

Provenance: With large presentation label printed in gold in each volume stating ‘Presented to the Right Reverend Mathew Blagden Hale, D. D. By the members of the Church of England … of Western Australia … Perth, October 28th, 1876.’ Bishop Mathew Blagden Hale (1811-1895), the first Bishop of Western Australia, and founder of Hale School; Emily Winthrop Miles (1893-1962) American painter and sculptor and descendent of John Winthrop (1588-1649) leading figure of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; bequeathed to The Brooklyn Museum in 1964; Sotheby’s New York 11 December 1989 lot 19; private English collection. Anker (1979) p. 60, nos. 174 and 179; Ayer (1926) 255-6, 259; ‘Fine Bird Books’ (1990) p. 78; Ferguson (1941-69) 4773 & 10032a; Nissen IVB (1976) 370 & 372; ODNB; Sauer (1982) 9 & 18; Sharpe (1893); Sitwell & Ripley (1990) pp. 40 & 102; Wantrup (1987); Wood (1931) p. 365.