Lot 34: Grayson, Andrew Jackson

Birds of the Pacific Slope. San Francisco: The Arion Press, 1986 One text volume, 4to (12 x 9 in.; 305 x 229 mm) and 3 atlas volumes, folio (25 x 19 1/4 in.; 635 x 489 mm). 156 color lithographed plates after Grayson mounted on guards, and one extra plate printed in black-and-white. Together with : Publisher's prospectus. Text volume bound in tan linen, gilt-lettered tan calf label on front cover, tan linen slipcase with tan calf spine label lettered gilt. Atlas volumes bound in green linen, green morocco labels lettered gilt on upper covers and spines. Prospectus: printed tan wrappers.

First edition, limited to 500 copies, this being copy no. 15, of 156 bird paintings by the "Audubon of the West," naturalist and frontier genius, Andrew Jackson Grayson. When Grayson began to paint the birds of western America in 1853, no naturalist had yet made a systematic depiction of the avifauna from the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific Ocean. Grayson envisioned his work as a completion of Audubon's monumental Birds of America, which had not included birds of the West. At the time of his death in 1869 Grayson was the most accomplished bird painter in North America yet relatively unknown except to a few ornithologists. After Grayson died, his wife Frances returned to San Francisco and sought to publish her husband's work, approaching California printers and the Smithsonian. She was flatly turned down, as publication of the paintings was prohibitively expensive. After ten years of trying, she donated the paintings to the University of California, Berkeley. For well over a century, the paintings languished in the library, slipping further into obscurity with the passage of time. The advent of modern printing technology made the project feasible at last, with all the splendor of Grayson's original watercolors faithfully reproduced.