DIED — On August 18, [1841] at Egham, [England] after five days giving birth to a daughter (her eighth child), Elizabeth, the beloved wife of Mr John Gould, of Broad-street, Golden Square, aged 37 years, most deeply lamented. Mrs. GOULD had accompanied her zealous and intrepid husband in his recent expedition to the interior of Australia; and since their return to England had been exercising her talents in preparing drawings of the various

extraordinary zoological productions, the discovery of which was the result of Mr Gould’s enterprising researches. All the drawings for his splendid series of scientific works during

the last twelve years, were from his wife’s pencil. They are alike remarkable for beauty of execution and fidelity of design and her premature death must be accounted a heavy loss to

ornithological science. — The Examiner, Sept. 2nd, 1841.

John Gould is known as the Bird Man

Zoologist, ornithologist, businessman, publisher, genius … John Gould is best remembered for the books he published containing exquisite colour illustrations of birds … many of those birds were unknown to science, unknown to all except those who shared their homeland, until they appeared in his books.

The Birds of Australia published in seven volumes over eight years from 1841, carried finely detailed illustrations and descriptions of almost half of all known Australian birds. Gould’s hunt for birds was obsessive, skilled and caused him to face many physical and mental challenges, yet it was the colour artworks contained in the ‘Birds of Australia’ volumes, and others, which built his reputation.

It would be a reputation that magnified after his death.

Often, he was credited with the brilliance of the art, as well as the genius of the science, contained in his publications.

To many, Elizabeth Gould was known as little more than the Bird Man’s wife.

The writer of her death notice (centre column) knew her to be so much more. But at the time of her passing and onwards for more than 150 years, the writer was as rare a specimen as many of the birds contained within the pages of ‘Bird of Australia’.

Some modern day biographers suggest that when John Gould met Elizabeth Coxen, he found in her a convenient fit for his ambitions.

John was a talented scientist particularly in the realms of observation and description but he had little aptitude as an illustrator.

Elizabeth showed talent as an artist and illustrator.

Both John and Elizabeth were 24 years old when they married in 1829. Was it a marriage of love or one of convenience? The answer is an unknown, one of history’s secrets which is likely to remain just that.

What is known is that Gould needed a talented illustrator to further his science, and his ambitions. Elizabeth needed an escape from her boredom as a governess; an outcome she had not envisaged when growing up in a middle class, military family.

And theirs may have been a love match.

According to Alexandra Alvis in an article for the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in 2018, Elizabeth’s letters to her mother do not contain any complaint about combining the roles of wife and mother with the pressures of producing artworks to a deadline.

She seemed to have been comfortable both in the role of mother to six and illustrator and lithographer.

Three years after their marriage, Gould published A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains in 20 monthly parts. In total, 80 hand coloured lithographs were produced by Elizabeth, whose original artworks were drawn from a collection of [stuffed] birds sent from the Himalayas to the Zoological Society’s museum where her husband worked as a Curator and Preserver.

Her early works were criticised by some contemporaries as stiff but if the artist has not seen the subject in life or in print then one must consider that adding vitality to an illustration of something that is long dead may just be a step too far, even for a gifted artist.

Our story is about Elizabeth and not the seminal work of her husband. His early accomplishments, particularly in the field of ornithology, were great and celebrated during his long lifetime and beyond.

The Goulds lived in a golden era of the natural sciences at a time when explorers had discovered new lands and new places.

The couple also moved in a circle of artists and natural historians, the former inspiring Elizabeth to further develop her talent and the latter motivating her to give life and vitality to her subjects as well as designing backgrounds true to the environment in which her subjects lived.

As her husband realised the business opportunities through publication of new-found birds and animals, he encouraged Elizabeth to learn the art of lithography from a young Edward Lear (a gifted illustrator who we know best for his artistry with limericks).

Lear’s tutelage helped her to become an adept at drawing and colouring birds and animals on canvas or paper and an adept at painting a mirror-image of those drawings onto a printer’s stone – the real art of lithography.

Elizabeth was pregnant with their first child when she began the illustrations for the ‘Birds of Himalaya’ project. She completed it four days before he was born.

Their next major project, spurred on by the success of the ‘Himalaya’ volumes, was to chronicle and illustrate the birds of Europe.

“This ambitious publication, which became the 448-plate ‘Birds of Europe’,” writes Alexandra Alvis for the Smithsonian, “required John and Elizabeth to travel extensively in continental Europe, visiting natural history collections and observing and collecting specimens in the wild.

“Being able to see living, moving birds enabled Elizabeth’s artistic talent to improve immensely; it is during this publication that she truly began to show the lively interactions between males and females of species, and incorporating movement into her figures that made them look as though they could fly off of the page at any moment.

“However, the artist credit on the lower left corner of the plates of Birds of Europe does not just bear Elizabeth’s name. Instead, her initial E. is preceded by a J., as John claimed artistic credit for the composition of the designs.

“This line would remain the norm throughout the rest of the publications they worked on together. In his preface to ‘Birds of Europe’, John describes how Elizabeth drew and lithographed the pieces, but credits himself for the ‘sketches and designs’.” It’s a boast that was later proven incorrect.

The ‘Europe’ project took five years and during those years, Elizabeth gave birth to five more children. Only three survived infancy.

“Also during this time, John employed Elizabeth to draw the plates to accompany his text on the bird specimens brought back by the young naturalist Charles Darwin from the voyage of the HMS Beagle,” Alvis continues.

Yet Elizabeth’s true masterpieces were still in the offing.

These would be accomplished when the couple sailed to Australia in 1838 with plans to spend around two years ‘in the field’ in anticipation of the production of the seven volume, ‘Birds of Australia’.

Elizabeth’s brothers Charles and Stephen Coxen had settled on farms in New South Wales. Charles was a taxidermist who had set up shop in London around the same time as Gould – this was before Gould was engaged by the Zoological Society as their first Curator and Preservator.

After emigrating to Australia, the Coxen brothers had begun sending preserved [stuffed] specimens of birds to the Goulds. Other collectors were asked to do the same and John Gould prepared the words and Elizabeth the illustrations and lithographs, for volumes entitled ‘A Synopsis of the Birds of Australia and Adjacent Islands’.

The illustrations were again superb, but only featured the heads of the birds, and sometimes other parts of the anatomy.

 It seems that the trip to Australia was planned so scientist and illustrator could see the birds in the wild and so produce volumes “authentic to the whole creature”. Added impetus for the trip was the scope of the species said to be found in the colonies and Gould’s hunter instinct to be the first to find new species.

During their time in Australia, another baby was born, findings and drawings were made and though Elizabeth in her letters home was fretting about the children who had been left in the care of her parents, it also appears she enjoyed her experience “in this wild and untamed land”.

Adria Castellucii writing for the Australian Museum earlier this year notes that up to that time, the range of bird life in Australia was virtually unknown to European naturalists.  

Elizabeth formed friendships, including that of Lady Jane Franklin, the wife of the Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemens Land and enjoyed adventures such as attending a ball at Government House in Sydney and a bush camping trip.

Castellucii writes that Elizabeth was astounded by the beauty and birdlife during their stay in the Hunter Valley, quoting a paragraph out of her journal: “Walked on the race course before breakfast the air balmy and very delightful, great numbers of the blue mountain parrots [Rainbow Lorikeet] were making their morning meal on a large kind of the Eucalypti – two of the beautiful Nankeen night herons passed over our heads – and we heard the curious note of the caul [cowl] bird or bald-headed friar [Noisy Friarbird] – returned with an excellent appetite – drew all day.”

The couple were back in England by August 1840. Elizabeth had worked on her drawings while on board ship and began in real earnest from almost the day after they arrived home.

She had completed 84 colour plates for the ‘Birds of Australia’ before she gave birth to their eighth child. Four days after their daughter was born, Elizabeth died from puerperal fever. She was 37 years old.

Her accomplishments were many and great.

During her career, which began with her marriage to John, she designed, lithographed and painted around 650 illustrations of birds and animals. After her death, her work was considered of an equal to that of the John James Audobon the world famous illustrator and publisher of ‘Birds of America’.

But the fact that many of her illustrations were not signed or carried the credit of J & E Gould, her name fell into obscurity.

That is until a cache of letters she wrote to her mother were found in 1938 and formed the basis of a book.

More recently, a novel based on the biography of Elizabeth Gould (The Birdman’s Wife) was written by Melissa Ashley and brought to life the achievements of this remarkable artist.