Provenance: Private Collection, Paris, France.

ABOUT THE WORK

The Elusive Martinet Birds of the Philippines These hand-colored images come from the famous set of volumes Histoire Naturelle Des Oiseaux edited by Georges Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Buffon, an Intendant du Jardin des Plantes du Roi (head of the Royal Botanical Gardens) under Louis XV. This was initially planned to be part of Buffon’s extensive natural history of the world, the Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière, which began in 1749. It then became an independent set published from 1771-86, with handcolored plates engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet, a French engineer, draftsman, and naturalist best remembered as an engraver, particularly specializing in engraving birds profiled in its respective habitats. The featured 35 extraordinary hand-colored pieces of Philippine birds are marked by yellow borders and a closeup perspective : The entire collection of Philippine birds numbers 37, thus making the set at hand nearly complete after several years’ of sleuthing and research. Each bears a title under each bird, either saying after the name of the bird “des (from) Philippines” or mentioning the Philippine island where the bird was identified. The thick, creamy chain-lined handmade paper has strong plate marks and crown watermarks within. Martinet has engraved the plates for various important works on natural history, especially ornithology. He illustrated many of the plays and operas by the luminaries of the day such as Voltaire, also drawing and engraving landscapes, portraits of notables and scenes of Versailles. Buffon, one of the preeminent scientists and mathematicians of the late 18th century, was noted by Charles Darwin as “the first author who in modern times has treated it [evolution] in a scientific spirit.” The Smithsonian Museum Library, which possesses several of these Martinet engravings furthermore describes the work and its principals as follows: “François Nicolas Martinet engraved illustrations of birds for books by some of the most influential ornithologists in 18th-century France. Born in 1731, Martinet was trained as an engineer and draftsman. Engraving illustrations for books probably began as a secondary profession. “Printing was in black and white, and any coloring had to be added by hand to the individual prints afterward. Thus, illustrations in books tended more often to be plain black-and-white; they were more affordable to produce and therefore more affordable to purchase. Hand- colored illustrations were produced in selected instances, but they were labor-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive and consequently were available only to the wealthy. Among those who could afford them, natural- history books containing hand-colored engravings became increasingly popular during the late 1700s. It became fashionable to display folios of hand-colored plates in one’s home, similar to the modern enjoyment of “coffee-table” books; and individual, loose illustrations were sold for display in portfolios or on walls, again much as we still do. “François Martinet became well respected for his engravings because he learned how to bring realism to his bird illustrations, a skill not easily acquired. “From his position at the French court, Buffon, one of the giants of the French Enlightenment, undertook a project not only to describe and classify comprehensively the royal collections but in fact to explicate the natural history of the world. time. “The plates are simple and spare in design, for the most part depicting a single bird (only rarely are there more than two) perched on a branch within a gold- or yellow- colored frame; the engraved and etched lines forming the figures are light and open, as it were, so as to allow the glowing, sometimes vibrant, coloring of the bird’s feathers, applied by hand after printing, to shine through. It is an altogether extraordinary suite of illustrations.”