William Matthew Hart (1830 - 1908)

Hart was a brilliant English bird illustrator and lithographer who worked for John Gould for most of his professional career. He began working for Gould in 1851, beginning an association that was to last thirty years. Early during this period he assisted with Gould’s work on hummingbirds, as well as working on The Birds of Great Britain with Henry Constantine Richter. By 1870 Hart had become Gould’s chief artist and lithographer and after Gould’s death in 1881, Hart was employed by Richard Bowdler-Sharpe of the British Museum to complete Gould’s work on the birds of New Guinea and to produce illustrations for Sharpe’s monograph on the birds-of-paradise.