The Australian Jabiru (Mycteria Australis.) Young Male.

George French Angas (1822 - 1886)

Angas was a painter, lithographer, engraver and naturalist, fourth child and eldest son of George Fife Angas, a merchant and banker. As the eldest son he was expected to join his father's firm, but some months in a London counting house proved a disillusioning experience. In 1841 he took art lessons for four months from Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, a natural history painter and lithographer, and armed with this instruction set out to see the world. He began in the Mediterranean publishing, A Ramble in Malta and Sicily in the Autumn of 1841.......Illustrated with Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Drawn on the Stone by the Author, the following year. Angas's father had established the South Australian Company in 1836 and had large areas of land as well as banking interests in the province. George French sailed for South Australia in 1843 in the Augustus, arriving in Adelaide on 1st January 1844. Within days he had joined an exploring party selecting runs for the South Australia Company. They traveled through the Mount Lofty Ranges to the Murray River and down to Lake Coorong and Angas sketched views of the countryside, native animals and the customs and dwellings of the Narrinyerri people. Later he drew scenes on his father's land - 28,000 acres in the Barossa Valley - and accompanied George Grey's expedition to the then unknown south-east as unofficial artist. In July 1844 Angas visited New Zealand. Guided by two Maoris, he traveled on foot and by canoe through both islands, painting portraits of Maoris and views. Angas's father died in 1879, leaving a vast estate from which George French received only a annuity of 1000 pounds. In 1884 he went to Dominica on a collecting expedition, finding shells, moths, butterflies and birds. Dogged by rheumatism and neuralgia during his last years, Angas died in London on 4 October 1886.

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Josef Wolf (1820 - 1899)

Born and educated in Prussia, Wolf was apprenticed to a lithographer at the age of sixteen, but after three years he returned home to work on a series of small, detailed bird drawings. This album of drawings brought Wolf recognition from book editors and museums in Frankfurt and Darmstadt. After working as an illustrator on commission, Wolf enrolled at the Antwerp Academy in 1847 to study painting. In 1848, he moved to London where he soon established himself among the leading naturalists and wildlife artists. In 1856, Gould and Wolf traveled together through Norway to study and sketch birds including ptarmigans, golden eagles, and ospreys. Gould included Wolf's depictions of game and water birds and birds of prey in his, The Birds of Great Britain (1862-1873). Among Wolf's other great achievements were his illustrations for the London Zoological Society's The Zoological Sketches (1856-67) and D.G. Elliot's The Life and Habits of Wild Animals (1874). Wolf became the most famous ornithological artist during his time.

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