Elizabeth Gould-Woman in Scientific Illustration

 

from australianmuseum.net.au

ELIZABETH GOULD was born Elizabeth Coxen to an educated middle class family in1804. She earned a living as a governess teaching Latin, French and music, but found the whole situation not to her liking. After a chance meeting at the Aviary of the Zoological Society, she married John Gould at age 24; a marriage that suited them. Through hard work and skill, John worked his way to post of Animal Preserver to the British Museum, and Ornithology Superintendent to the Zoological Society. As for Elizabeth, she wasted no time in launching into her illustration career beginning with drawings for the first volume of a 20 part series: A Century of Birds of the Himalaya Mountains. Within this time, she and John lost their first child at birth, but in 1830, she gave birth to their second child, John Henry.

From Birds of Europe, Elizabeth Gould

At John’s request, Elizabeth received tutelage under Edward Lear, the famed bird artist at the Zoological Society. This professional training increased her skills, depth and breath of work. Even John James Audubon took notice. But as she was working on the next section of,  A Century of Birds of the Himalaya Mountains, she suffered the lose of third child after another difficult pregnancy.

John Gould is often seen as an artist in his own right, an illusion he encouraged. In truth, his passion lie more with the production of the work, and it was Elizabeth’s hand that provided the final product. After A Century of Birds of the Himalaya Mountains was finished, she began work on Birds of Europe. She and John traveled across Europe together to study and collect specimens for the latest endeavor. During this time she gave birth to three more children.

On May 16^th 1838, Elizabeth left all but the eldest child with her mother, and set sail for Australia with John. They spent two years in Australia. During this time, she worked on drawing hundreds of specimens for Birds of Australia and A Monograph of the Macropodidæ, or Family of Kangaroos. She also worked with Charles Darwin on illustrations for the Ornithology volume of Zoology of the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle. Their seventh child was born in Tasmania.

They arrived back in London is 1840, but Elizabeth never had a chance to complete her work on the animals of Australia. She died after giving birth to their eighth child, at age 37. The preparation for lithography printing (transferring to stone) of her last drawings was completed by illustrator H. C. Richter. She did not receive credit at publication. John Gould went on to produce his bird books, using H. C. Richter, Edward Lear, Joseph Wolf and William Hart as illustrators.

Northern Quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus), credited to John Gould

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AMANDA ZIMMERMAN

An illustrator of nature is an observer of form and behavior.  My job is to create illustrations that not only engage the general public with vibrancy and motion, but educate the viewer about the subject and create a connection of memory. It is these connections to nature that we make, a sense of personal contact-even if only through an illustration- that imparts a sense of responsibility to our natural world. www.salamandaart.com

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