Birds & Beasts Africa by Bryan Hanlon

Birds & Beasts Africa (Illustrated Wildlife Art Book in Dust Jacket)

A Wildlife Artist's Paintings and Field Sketches of African Birds and Mammals, Gathered in One Handsome Volume

Bibliographic Specifications

• Title: Birds & Beasts Africa: Observations of a Wildlife Artist
• Author: Bryan Hanlon
• Publisher: Swan Hill Press, an imprint of Airlife Publishing Ltd, Shrewsbury, England
• Publication Date: 1997
• ISBN-13: 9781853103636
• ISBN-10: 1853103632
• Edition Details: First published in the UK in 1997.
• Binding: Publisher's dark blue cloth hardcover with a colour-illustrated dust jacket.
• Physical Format: Large quarto-size illustrated art book, 128 pages. With full-page colour plates, double-page spreads and pencil sketches.
• Language: English

Official Condition Report

• The Book: Very Good (VG)
• Exterior / Boards: Dark blue cloth boards, with a small dent or crease to the front board near the fore-edge and a few tiny light specks. The spine cloth is clean and square, and the corners are sharp. The top edge is mostly clean; the fore-edge or lower edge shows a few small dark specks and light marks.
• Interior: The pages seen are clean and bright, with colour plates and sketches. No foxing, tears or writing seen. The binding is tight and the book opens flat.
• The Dust Jacket: Present. The colour-illustrated jacket (a bateleur on a buffalo skull to the front, a painted collage of parrots and lemurs to the back) shows light surface scuffing and shelf wear across the front panel and spine, with no large tears. Protected in a durable archival-type plastic cover.

Synopsis & Historical Value

Published in 1997 by Swan Hill Press, Birds & Beasts Africa: Observations of a Wildlife Artist is a gallery of African wildlife paintings by Bryan Hanlon. Every major painting is reproduced in colour, with the artist's initial working sketches printed alongside.

The subjects range from a lioness bringing down prey to a female eland with her calf, and include many African birds. Hanlon adds his own notes on where and how each subject was observed and painted, which makes the book as much a record of fieldwork as a portfolio of finished pictures.

A large, heavy, generously illustrated volume, it will appeal to collectors of Africana wildlife art and to anyone who enjoys seeing how a painting develops from sketch to finished work.

Author Profile: Bryan Hanlon

Bryan Hanlon was born in 1956 and is a self-taught artist. He works across media, from egg tempera and oil painting to sculpture in bronze, and was named Wiltshire Artist of the Year in 2010.

He has also illustrated books, including Gerald Durrell's Army and Conservation, published in 1997.

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