Nine-banded Armadillo · Plate 146 · Audubon - Quadrupeds of North America Print

Nine-banded Armadillo - a hand-coloured lithograph from John James Audubon and John Bachman's The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, issued between 1845 and 1848.

Plate 146 of 150, "Nine-banded Armadillo" (Dasypus Peba), from The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, lithographed and hand-coloured by J. T. Bowen of Philadelphia between 1845 and 1848.

Curiosities of the continent. Among the most unusual animals in the work, drawn with the same close attention to texture - quill, scale or fur - as the larger subjects.

The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America was Audubon's last great work, made with the naturalist John Bachman, who wrote the text. Its 150 plates were issued between 1845 and 1848 on imperial folio sheets, the smaller animals drawn life-size, and lithographed and coloured by hand by J. T. Bowen in Philadelphia. As Audubon's eyesight failed, his son John Woodhouse Audubon drew many of the later plates, travelling as far as Texas to find his subjects.

Each plate is a hand-coloured lithograph rather than an engraving: Bowen's printers drew the image on stone and his colourists finished every sheet by brush, which gives the fur its soft depth and makes each impression slightly different from the next.

Taken from a high-resolution scan of an original folio plate, with Bowen's hand colouring left exactly as it was laid. Made to order on heavyweight cotton-fibre archival paper and sold at a single size, mounted with an equal border all round and framed in-house.