18th Century Pheasants Framed Antique 18th Century Hand Colored Book Illustration Le Faisan 1785 Buffon Natural History

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Illustrated page from the Histoire naturelle, generale et particuliere by Le Comte de Buffon ca. 1785.

Showing selected Pheasants this … Read more Illustrated page from the Histoire naturelle, generale et particuliere by Le Comte de Buffon ca. 1785.

Showing selected Pheasants this is from Volume IV, Oiseaux (birds) of his compendious natural history, eventually stretching to 36 volumes plus additional post mortem publications.

This is plate II showing 1) Le faisan; 2) Le faisan ou Le Tricolor Huppe de la Chine and; 3) la femelle. That is, 1) Pheasant; 2) The Chinese Pheasant or Hoopoe Tricolor; 3) the female.

Hand colored engraving, 12 1/4 x 9 3/4 in frame, 5 3/4 x 3 1/2 sight, slight foxing. Black paper dust cover to rear with framers label


Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (French: 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedist. He was director of the Jardin du Roi, now called the Jardin des Plantes.

His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent French scientists Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier. Buffon published thirty-six quarto volumes of his Histoire Naturelle during his lifetime, with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the two decades following his death.

Credited with being one of the first naturalists to recognize ecological succession, he was later forced by the theology committee at the University of Paris to recant his theories about geological history and animal evolution because they contradicted the Biblical narrative of Creation. See less