First let me say I haven’t painted another storm window since I posted last. We took advantage of the season to go fishing and geocaching before the winter sets in. I better get to the storm windows, it snowed last night.
Secondly, I took another look at the items I brought back with me on our road trip to California as they haven’t moved from the spot I put them in when we unloaded the car. I got the ugly stuff no one else in my family wanted (ha, ha.) However, ugly is in the eye of the beholder.
I looked the print over and brought it upstairs to the computer and started Googling hummingbird prints and found several that were close to mine, but not the same as mine. Those were sketched by John Gould and lithographed in the 1800s and then hand colored afterward. I knew mine wasn’t the original lithograph, that isn’t my kind of luck. But….it is a 1946 (just a date guess by others in forums etc) print of the lithograph and it really does look hand painted. The problem with the print and why no one in my family wanted it was it was in a bamboo frame, with a little string to hang it up. Looked really, really cheap, and the glass was very dirty from being in the attic from at least since 1963 when our family, fresh from Minnesota, moved into the California house. It had no sentimental value, either, because it wasn’t really something handed down from the family.
I pulled the nails from the backing to release the print and matting. Oops! The matting was glued in a couple of spots to the lower side of the print. Rats! Well, nothing I can do about it. I admired the print, the color looked so much like watercolors. It had to be hand painted over the black and white print, I thought. I took out the magnifying glass and looked through the little circle that really magnifies and I could see along the edges of the color that it was a print but not like the prints of today, there weren’t the circle dots. It is really a great reproduction of the original!
On the bottom of the print it says
J. Gould and H.C Richter, del et lith Thalurania Refulgens, Gould. Hullmandel & Walton, 1mp (or Imp or Imq)
Up in the painting there is also IBFCo which I understand means IB Fisher Company of NY to distinguish itself from the originals. It is the name of the print company. The paper it is printed on is 10″ x 11.” It was too wide for my flatbed scanner and the scanner cropped the image but you can see the original outline of the matting was.
I now had a name to Google and I found a few photos posted of the this print. Some call it Refulgens Wood-nymphs but I’m not sure that is the same one. It may not be worth much but it looks very pretty and I love hummingbirds and best of all it was free and I’m thrilled to have it. A new frame will do wonders. Below is my print. The scan doesn’t show the soft blushing on some of the petals. Isn’t it pretty?
