Pitta concinna

Pitta concinna. Pitta concinna Gould is one of the many birds first described by John Gould. It is also one of the animals for which the Ellis Collection has a nearly complete set of the many stages through which a picture passed on its way from original sketch to published hand-colored lithograph.
Rough watercolor sketch, probably by Gould.
Ink and watercolor, by W. Hart, with pencilled changes probably by Gould.
Tracing, incorporating suggested changes.
Lithographic print (before text), with pencilled instructions probably by Gould.
Lithographic print after the text has been added on the stone, uncolored.
Final, hand-colored lithographic print. In The Birds of New Guinea, vol. 4, plate 31.
All three thousand of Gould's published plates were prepared from a progression of sketches, drawings and tracings culminating in an image drawn on the lithographic stone. This stone, showing another Pitta, P. coccinea, published in Birds of Asia, vol. 5, plate 68, has been canceled by lines scratched across the face, as was the usual practice when it was decided that no more copies were to be published. The Spencer Library has a dozen such stones—the rest were probably ground down and the surface re-used—a single stone could well have yielded more than one Gould plate in its lifetime.