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Fable of The Crow and the Pitcher; a crow standing to right in front of a rock, dropping a pebble into a pitcher; more pebbles lying in foreground; in an oval, within rectangular frame; illustration to 'Select Fables' (Newcastle: 1784); touched proof.
Wood-engraving, touched with graphite
Series of prints made by Thomas Bewick
Currently in possession of the British Museum.
Fable of The Frogs and the Mice
Wood engraving by Thomas Bewick 1785-1790
Thomas Bewick (1753-1828)
Thomas Bewick, wood engraving, 1780.
The Cross-Bill (from A History of British Birds), Thomas Bewick, 1847
A Mighty-billed Bewick Feathursday
This week we return to the wood engravings of Thomas Bewick from volume 2, “History and Description of Water Birds,” of Bewick’s famous 2-volume set, A History of British Birds. Our copy is the 1826 edition (the 1st edition was published in 1797, with the volume on water birds appearing in 1804) printed in Newcastle, England, by Edward Walker. This time we select birds with impressive proboscises. They are from top to bottom:
Eurasian Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus). Pied Avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta). Eurasian Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia). Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus). Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata). Eurasian Woodcock (Scolopax rusticola). Common Snipe (Gallinago gallinago). Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa). Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica).
As much as he could, Bewick would make his renderings from living specimens, however, in many cases he often had to resort to skins and preserved specimens. For example, in his depiction of the Glossy Ibis, which was rare in Britain during his time and remains so today, Bewick states:
The stuffed specimen from which our figure is taken, was obligingly lent to this work by P. J. Selby, Esq. of Twizel House; it was a male bird, shot on the banks of the Coquet, near Rothbury, in the autumn of 1820. . . .
View other wood engravings by Thomas Bewick.
View more Feathursday posts.
Short-eared bat with wings spread (1780-1790).
Illustration to Ralph Beilby's 'A General History of Quadrupeds' (Newcastle upon Tyne: 1790). Wood-engraving by Thomas Bewick.
© The Trustees of the British Museum.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.
Thomas Bewick, Woodblock depicting a swan
“Wood engraving, a printmaking technique in which a print is made from a design incised on the transverse section, or end, of a hardwood block. The technique was developed in England in the last half of the 18th century, and its first master was the printmaker Thomas Bewick...” Britannica
