White-winged Ant-Arctic Goose

This originally hand-colored engraving is from Peter Brown’s New Illustrations of Zoology, Containing fifty coloured plates of new, curious, and non-descript birds, with a few quadrupeds, reptiles, and insects. Together with a short and scientific description of the same. The title reads in French, Nouvelles Illustrations de Zoologie, Contenant Cinquante Planches Enluminées d’Oiseaux Curieux, Et Qui Non Étés Jamais Descrits, Et Quelques de Quadrupèdes, de Reptiles Et d’Insectes, Avec de Courtes Descriptions Systématiques). This is the first edition published in London by Benjamin Wright in 1776. The engravings were printed by William Bowyer and John Nichols.

The engravings will typically include a text page that features titles and text in parallel French and English. Most of the engravings from the work also show the signature P. Brown or Peter Brown. Some of the plates from it are dated to early 1775.

Brown based his drawings upon the collections of Marmaduke Tunstall, Thomas Pennant, the Royal Museum, and the Royal Society. His work also included 20 plates based upon drawings by Pieter Cornelis de Bevere, a native of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), who observed the collection of John Gideon Loten, Ceylon’s Dutch East India administrator. Thomas Pennant contributed most of the text for the work. There are animals illustrated in the work from South Carolina, Florida, Surinam, Brazil, Jamaica, Angola, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and Java.