Ornithological Watercolours. 

 A rare and extremely fine collection of watercolours by the noted ornithological artist, Charles Hayes. Collections of his work are very rare: this is only the fifth substantial collection to be recorded.

2 volumes, 115 original watercolour drawings of birds by Hayes on thick card, each within an ink ruled border, all titled and signed by the artist, 7 dated 1808, 3 dated 1811, 44 dated 1812 and 12 dated 1813 (occasional faint and insignificant marginal staining, occasional minor scattered spotting); Contemporary Polished Calf Gilt, folio (44 x 28.3 cm); London, 1808-1813.

William Hayes (1729-1799) was a bird illustrator from Southall, Middlesex. Nissen IVB 421-422 identifies two printed books, and Mullens and Swann (pp.286-288) four printed books giving William as the author. The advertisement for each of the two volumes of William Hayes’s Portraits of rare and curious birds… at Osterley Park (1794-1799) informed the reader that the work on the plates had been done by himself and ‘seven of his pupils’. We know that the Hayes family did all the work on the text, drawing, etching and stippling, also the colouring of the plates, and that the seven pupils were Hayes’s children, perhaps also his wife Anne. Charles is named as one of the sons of William on the title page of The Portraits of British Birds 1808-1816, and perhaps these original watercolours were part of that production.