Three original pencil drawings of waterfowl on thick art paper, executed for inclusion in his "Wild Fowl of the United States and British Possessions"
(New York: Harper, 1898), as individually described below, each signed and labeled in pencil below the image. [Chicago?], 1890s. Original pencil drawings. (1) "The American Black Scoter / Ademia americana," an original pencil drawing, 11 3/4 x 15 1/2 inches, of two American Scoters, a male and a female, swimming on the water's surface, but with one webbed foot clearly visible below, with hills in the background; signed in pencil by the artist below the image, "Drawn from Nature by D.G. Elliot, F.R.S.E. &c.," and labeled as the title. (2) "Canvas-Back Duck," an original pencil drawing, 11 1/2 x 15 1/4 inches, of two American Scoters, a male and a female, the male standing on a marsh, the female swimming on the water's surface, with a small flock of canvasbacks flying the background; signed in pencil by the artist below the image, "Drawn from Nature by D.G. Elliot, F.R.S.E. &c.," and labeled as the title. (3) "Hooded Merganser / Lophodytes cucullatus," an original pencil drawing, 11 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches, of two Hooded Mergansers, a male and a female, swimming on the water's surface, but with one webbed foot of each clearly visible below, with wooded islands in the background; signed in pencil by the artist below the image, "Drawn from Nature by D.G. Elliot.," and labeled as the title. A similar lot of Elliot's drawings for "Wild Fowl" sold at auction in 1988 for $2000 (ABPC, 1976-2011). Very good. Matted (some darkening or soiling around the edges). (#6098). Item #59090
Elliot, a native of New York City, travelled through Europe, the Near East, and South America as a young man studying the birds of those areas, "a subject in which he had always been interested. An artist of no mean attainments, his ambitions led him to the publication of large folios, like those of John Gould, monographing various families of birds with lifesize illustrations from his own brush ... these included birds of paradise, pheasants, and thrushes, horn bills, and other species. His own collection of birds, consisting of some one thousand specimens, and covering most of the described species in North America, was the best private collection extant, and was secured by the American Museum of Natural History in 1869" (DAB). He was one of the founders of the American Ornithologists' Union and its second president (1890); he accepted a position at the Field Museum in Chicago in the early 1890s, directing that institution for ten years, ending his career working on the natural history of mammals.
Price: $3,500.00