Casuarius Westerman

The British naturalist John Gould was famed for his lavishly illustrated books about birds. This drawing was the basis for a color lithograph in his Birds of New Guinea, published four years after his death. Though the image seems to depict a pair of cassowaries, it in fact depicts two views of the same bird, which had recently died at the London zoo. The front-facing bird, which was drawn on a separate piece of paper that was then pasted on the larger sheet, was likely drawn by the artist Joseph Wolf, who had previously assisted Gould with Birds of Great Britain. After the cassowary died, the bird was sent to Gould, who made the profile sketch.