Turkey

This originally hand-colored, folio bird engraving is from Francois-Nicolas & Alexandre Martinet’s work with the title pages reading Oiseaux par Martinet, ingénieur peintre graveur et naturaliste, rue Julien le Pauvre and Oiseaux par Martinet, tome 2, An VIII. It was printed in Paris in the early 1800s.

Many of the birds depicted were from the Americas, Africa, Malabar, India, China, Greenland, and more. The title pages were hand-written to this work, and undated. The plates were after images originally published in Martinet’s Histoire des Oiseaux Peints dans Tous Leurs Aspects Apparents et Sensibles as well as his rare work Petit atlas d’ornithologie ou Collection choisie d’Oiseaux les plus connus.

Alexandre, Martinet’s son, produced the rare Petit atlas in 1815 when his father’s original publication did not reach the acclaim he felt it deserved. He noted “This collection was published around thirty-six years ago by my father, a collaborator of Mr. de Buffon for ornithology: at the time, it was a great success; but the revolution suddenly changed the habits and occupations of the French and nearly all Europeans, and this work did not receive the recognition it deserved. Today… I present this collection to the public once again, in a form and order I believe will capture their interest.

Ronsil notes: “As this statement by Alexandre Martinet might suggest, this atlas is neither a reproduction, nor a reprint, nor a continuation of Martinet Sr.’s Planches Enluminées, although the engraving and coloring are similar. That both father and son collaborated on it cannot be ruled out. It is even possible that some of these plates were originally intended for Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux…“

François-Nicolas Martinet (1731–1800) was an engineer, draftsman, and engraver of the King’s Cabinet. He was one of the greatest birds artists of the 18th century. Martinet’s illustrations are accurate and beautifully artistic, but brought an element of realism to bird illustrations.