[click through to full-sized versions; all images are spliced together
from screencaps; some background blemishes have been removed]
from screencaps; some background blemishes have been removed]
This exquisite gouache album of bird paintings from China was sketched in the 19th century and is available online at the Royal Digital Library of Belgium.
The album may have been produced to cater to a strong European market for Oriental artworks, although no definitive information about these sketches has been retained. It is a stable-mate of another (stylistically similar) anonymous watercolour sketch album owned by the Belgian Library, featured here on BibliOdyssey a few months ago: The Butterfly Album.
Previously: fauna.