“CALYPTORHYNCHUS MACRORHYNCHUS” & “CALYPTORHYNCHUS NASO"
[Great-billed Black Cockatoo & Western Black Cockatoo]
GRACIUS JOSEPH BROINOWSKI
(Walichnowy 1837- Mosman 1913)
Technique: CHROMOLITHOGRAPHY
Colour lithograph depicting a Great-billed Black Cockatoo and Western Black Cockatoo, in their natural environment.
From Broinowski’s “Birds of Australia”, one of the three most important 19th century studies of Australian ornithology.
Original chromolithograph printed on wove paper, signed lower right.
SIZE: 368mm(H) x 265mm(L) [sheet]
In perfect condition. Excellent impression and colours.
BIOGRAPHY OF GRACIUS JOSEPH BROINOWSKI (1837-1913)
Broinowski was an artist and ornithologist, born in Poland and educated at Munich University where he studied classics, languages and art subjects.
To avoid being conscripted into the Russian army, he went to Germany where a period of privation followed both on the Continent and in London, and about 1857 he joined a ship bound for Australia.
Experiences at sea appear to have been very trying for him, so that he was glad to swim ashore at Portland, Victoria, and walk into the country.
He worked in rural Victoria and later found employment with a firm of publishers in Melbourne; he then travelled widely in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, painting landscapes and scenes of various towns and promoting “art unions” with his pictures as prizes.
Settling in Sydney in 1880 he taught paintings to private pupils and at colleges, lectured on art and exhibited at various showings of the Royal Art Society.
He was then commissioned to supply the Department of Public Instruction in New South Wales with pictures of Australian birds and mammals.
In 1887 Broinowski issued his famous series “The Birds of Australia”.
GENUINE ANTIQUE DATED 1889 - GUARANTEED OVER 136 YEARS OLD