Description

Plate 171. Royal Octavo, second edition (1856).
Rare test print before hand coloring, with background tint not in the first edition. The Audubon sons introduced mechanically applied background tints to enhance the color of the images, believing this would make the prints more appealing while adding only minimally to the cost of production.
This is one of the rare proofs that helped them decide on the viability of the process, as well as on the appropriate color for a specific print. See also numbers 69, 93, 94, and 96. The subtle coloration of the background tints must have pleased the public, because they continued to be used in the five subsequent editions, until 1871.
Today, first edition Royal Octavo prints without tint, like the original Double Elephant Folio and Bien images, are preferred. Tinted prints appear smaller because the image is set off from the paper, usually in a rectangle. Prints without tint look larger because there is no distinction between the background and the overall page, giving the effect that the entire page is the background.
The Royal Octavo prints in the Gallery are chiefly from the first edition. Prints from later editions are attractive, but serve primarily as historical examples of later editions here (see Display Table 3, below, for the third edition), or as contrasts to the first edition (i.e., these proof prints from the second edition). Compare this number 67 with number 66.