John Gerrard Keulemans (1)
John Gerrard Keulemans (1842-1912) learned lithography from Professor
Hermann Schlegel while working in the Leyden Museum. Keulemans
went on collecting expeditions in West Africa, where he bought a coffee
plantation with the intention of settling. However, falling ill
with fever, he migrated to London in 1869 and, sponsered by
Richard Bowdler Sharpe, emerged as one of the finest and most
prolific birds artists of all time, illustrating over 115 books while
putting his distinctive stamp on every painting. The hand-colored
lithographs on this page are cut from
Richard Bowdler Sharpe and William Ogilvie-Grant's monumental Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum, London,1881-1898 . Lithography is by Mintern Brothers. The Catalogue, according to Zimmer,
is "unquestionably the most important work on systematic ornithology
that has ever been published."
