Hawkins (Benjamin Waterhouse)

Hawkins (Benjamin Waterhouse)

The Shielded Leged Horned Owl, and 10 other plates for J.E. Gray’s ‘Illustrations of Indian Zoology, chiefly selected from the collection of Major-General Hardwicke’, including Plain Fishing Eagle and Small Paradise Bird, others of partridges, herons, woodpeckers, pheasant and bustard, also a duplicate of the first named, original hand-coloured lithographs on Whatman wove paper, each c.430 x 325 mm, one trimmed with loss of title, the duplicate damp-stained, two or three others affected with surface dust and other occasional minor defects, [1830-34] (11)

*** Thomas Hardwicke (1756-1835) served for many years in the British East India Company army, and was a noted naturalist who gathered numerous specimens, often new to science, which he had recorded by Indian artists. Following his return to England he collaborated with J.E. Gray to produce the publication from which this plate is taken. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807-1894), was a keen naturalist and palaeontologist, artist and sculptor, perhaps most famous for creating the dinosaurs that populated the park in Sydenham that housed the relocated Crystal Palace in the 1850s, and going on to produce similar creations in the 1860s and ’70s in America.