Original Hand-coloured Lithograph of Turnstones from the Birds of Europe by John Gould, 1832-37

Original hand-coloured lithograph by John and Elizabeth Gould, taken from Gould’s major work The Birds of Europe, 1832-37. To the rear of the frame is a page of text describing the Turnstone.

John Gould (1804 –1881) has been described as "the greatest figure in bird illustration after Audubon" (University of Glasgow). He started his career as a taxidermist and in 1828 was appointed animal preserver at the museum of the newly created Zoological Society of London. George IV commissioned him to stuff the first giraffe in Britain, which had been presented to him by the Viceroy of Egypt.

The Birds of Europe, comprising 448 hand-coloured folio-size lithographs in five volumes was originally published in 22 parts from 1832 to 1837. Forty one of these volumes were published. Although John Gould‘s wife Elizabeth generally drew and lithographed his sketches and designs some illustrations in Birds of Europe were created by the nonsense writer and painter Edward Lear.

When Charles Darwin presented his mammal and bird specimens collected during the second voyage of HMS Beagle to the Zoological Society of London on 4 January 1837, the bird specimens were given to Gould for identification. Gould reported that birds from the Galápagos Islands which Darwin had thought were blackbirds, "gross-bills" and finches were in fact "a series of ground Finches which are so peculiar" as to form "an entirely new group, containing 12 species." His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin‘s finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin‘s theory of evolution by natural selection. Gould‘s work is referenced in Charles Darwin‘s book, On the Origin of Species.