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."
