Elizabeth Gould

Elizabeth Gould was one of the most important ornithological artists of the nineteenth century. Probably because much of her short life was spent in the shadow of her husband, Elizabeth Gould’s significant artistic and scientific contribution to the art of natural history has been overlooked traditionally. However, her reputation has recently been reassessed in Andrea Hart and Ann Datta’s monograph Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould, published in 2023.

Elizabeth was born and educated in Ramsgate, Kent. In 1827 she began working as a governess in London. She met John Gould, Curator and Preserver for the Museum of the Zoological Society from 1828, through her brother Charles Coxen, a fellow taxidermist. They married in 1829. John Gould was to become the publisher of the greatest series of bird books ever produced, and, until her death aged thirty-seven in 1841, Elizabeth was the major contributor of lithographs to his oeuvre creating over six hundred lithographic plates for their publications. Complications with the birth of their fourth child nearly killed Elizabeth in 1833. Some of her best work is to be found in Gould’s Birds of Europe (1832–1837) and this outstanding book also contained lithographs by Edward Lear who instructed her in lithography; together they raised the standard of ornithological illustration. The two artists also worked on Ramphastidæ or Family of Toucans, 1833-1835. Only a few women mastered lithography making Gould’s contribution all the more noteworthy. She had eight children in twelve years before her premature death.

John Gould began his career as a taxidermist and by 1833 had become superintendent of the ornithological department at the newly established London Zoological Society, where he joined a circle of prominent naturalists. He was responsible for the scientific descriptions of birds collected by Charles Darwin during the voyage of HMS Beagle, and provided the crucial information that the wildly different Galapagos specimens were all finches. Less heralded have been the plates which accompanied the illustrations of Darwin’s ‘Birds’ which were credited to Elizabeth Gould after sketches by John in Darwin’s introduction to the work.

The Goulds started in publishing during the late 1820s, when the first substantial collection of Himalayan birds was obtained by the Zoological Society. Their novelty in Britain made them interesting both to naturalists and wealthy enthusiasts, providing the opportunity to produce a lavish volume depicting all eighty species (one hundred birds in total were depicted, with the title A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains, 1830 -1833). Elizabeth was responsible for the illustrations, made the original watercolours and also transferred them to lithographic stones for printing. The images were then finished to the highest standard by teams of professional hand-colourists. It was by far the most accurate work on foreign ornithology published up to that time. Its success convinced the couple to continue as a publisher, and over the next fifty years John Gould produced another forty-nine imperial folio volumes covering birds from almost every continent, including Australia, which he and Elizabeth visited to collect specimens and draw birds from life in 1838-1839.

The two Australian books which the couple produced, A Synopsis of the Birds of Australia, and the Adjacent Islands (1837-8) closely followed by The Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands (1837-8) cemented the Goulds reputation. Elizabeth is thought to have made all the plates which are minutely detailed and full of charm.