Adolphe Boucard (FRENCH, 1839-1905)
Original Watercolors
Initialed and dated 1888.
7 leaves of artist’s stock approx. 9 1/2 x 6 1/4 in. with 68 exquisite watercolors of a hummingbird
heads, many with ornithological names underneath, all with specimen numbers; a further two
leaves and ten smaller trimmed sections of sketchbook with an additional 30 heads from various species of small birds and of various sizes, dated 1888 and initialed by the artist.
Preserved in a modern red cloth chemise and clamshell box.

Adolphe Boucard was a French ornithologist and specimen trader renowned for his extensive collections in Mexico and Central America. He lived in San Francisco from 1851 to 1852, during the height of the California Gold Rush. During this time, he also worked in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, and South America. From 1854 to 1867, Boucard conducted bird-collecting expeditions in southern Mexico, selling many of his specimens to the ornithologist P.L. Sclater. The trade in bird specimens proved quite lucrative for Boucard, prompting him to write a pamphlet on how to profit from collecting and selling natural specimens. This pamphlet was titled "How to Gain from Eighty to Two Hundred Pounds Sterling a Year by Instructive and Amusing Means, or Instructions for Collecting, Preserving, and Sending Collections of Natural History" (1871).

Boucard’s primary focus was on collecting hummingbirds, which he sold to natural history museums and supplied to the plume trade. Most of his collection, nearly 25,000 bird skins, was donated to the Natural History Museum in Paris between 1895 and 1904. Additionally, the Natural History Museum in Washington, now known as the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), received 10,000 duplicate specimens, while museums in Madrid and Lisbon acquired another 8,000 specimens. In 1889, Boucard returned to France, where he purchased a collection from the Comte de Riocour, which he later sold to the British Museum. Around 1890, he moved his firm to London, establishing Boucard, Pottier & Co.

Once settled, he began publishing a periodical, The Hummingbird, which ran from 1891–95. In 1894, he moved to the Isle of Wight and published Travels of a Naturalist. The ornithologist also began publishing his book Genera Humming Birds (1895). Genera Humming Birds was dedicated to Linneaus. In his book, he professed, “I am more convinced than ever that these beautiful birds stand quite alone by themselves. They can be considered as the handsomest and most perfect, and are fully entitled to be classified separately under the name of Trochili, as I have proposed for them in my ‘Catalogue Avium,’ London 1876… in the future, the author hopes to be able to issue a certain number of plates figuring the heads of all the Genera recognized in this volume. The drawings are ready, but he has not been able yet to find a suitable engraver.” 

This collection includes sixty-eight bird head delineations of hummingbirds (seven sheets depicting 8-10 heads on each sheet); they are likely some of the preparatory studies of heads Boucard references in Genera Humming Birds, but were never published. There are an additional thirty bird-head studies of various species, dated 1888 and signed on several sheets. 

Adolphe Boucard passed away at his son’s home in Hampstead in 1905. #AP00002