Brown, M.E.D. “Scarlet Tanager & Blue Eyed Yellow Warbler.”

M.E.D. Brown.  “Scarlet Tanager & Blue Eyed Yellow Warbler.”  From the Cabinet of Natural History and American Rural Sports. 

Philadelphia: J. and T. Doughty, 1830 and 1832.  6 x 7(image).  Lithograph by Childs and Inman.  Original hand color.  Very good condition. 

A print from a vibrant group of prints from “the first major sport print color book produced in America,” (Bennett, p. 35).  These beautifully executed hunting scenes and glimpses into rural America were the work of leading American artists, including Thomas Doughty, the founder of the Hudson River School.  Titian Ramsay Peale, who is credited with having been the first American artist to observe and paint firsthand the Indians and Buffalo of the Great Plains when he accompanied Stephen Long’s western expedition, was another major influence.  Thus these prints hold up today as wonderful works of art, as well as superb examples of primitive, early Americana.