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拍品专文
Jacques Barraband is justly celebrated as the finest ornithological artist of his time. Drawings of flowers, insects and birds make up the greater part of the artist’s graphic work. His most important achievement was a series of more than 300 drawings in watercolour and bodycolour executed to illustrate François Levaillant’s monumental works of natural history and birds. This delicate drawing was used for plate 21 in volume II of Levaillant’s Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de paradis et des rolliers, suivie des celle des toucans et des barbus, published in 1806. The Blue-Throated Barbet is a green Asian Barbet native to the foothills of the Himalayas and Southeast Asia.
As has been noted of Barraband’s watercolours for Levaillant, ‘they are considered among the most beautiful bird drawings in existence... no one else equalled his mastery in the rendering of feathers, in evoking their fragility, stiffness, or incredible lightness. He displayed a preference for harmonies of blue and green…The evocative power of these realistic and precise works, featuring all the colours of the rainbow, is almost dream-inducing.’ (M. Pinault, The Painter as Naturalist from Dürer to Redouté, Paris, 1991, p. 204.)
As has been noted of Barraband’s watercolours for Levaillant, ‘they are considered among the most beautiful bird drawings in existence... no one else equalled his mastery in the rendering of feathers, in evoking their fragility, stiffness, or incredible lightness. He displayed a preference for harmonies of blue and green…The evocative power of these realistic and precise works, featuring all the colours of the rainbow, is almost dream-inducing.’ (M. Pinault, The Painter as Naturalist from Dürer to Redouté, Paris, 1991, p. 204.)