Yellowhead (Mohua) from Buller’s Birds of NZ

NZ Avian Art

Print size in millimetres: 420 x 300

Mohua, Yellowhead, Orthonyx albicilla and Pōpokotea, Whitehead, Orthonyx ochrocephala, hand-coloured lithograph by Johannes Keulemans. Plate 12 from A history of the birds of New Zealand, 1873. John Keulemans was a well respected Dutch artist of the nineteenth century. Noted for his drawings and lithographs of birds - his paintings of NZ birds are the famous prints from the classic NZ book Buller's Birds. Keulemans never visited New Zealand, but drew from stuffed birds and specimens provided by Buller. For each illustration he first produced a drawing for Buller’s inspection, then a coloured painting, which served as the basis for each lithograph. This is an exceptional print that pops with colour, an extremely high quality reprint that shows how modern high resolution scanning combined with the latest giclee printing technology can breathe new life into an artwork that has been buried in the archive for decades.