page_title: Henry Constantine Richter
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Constantine Richter / Career
caption_attribution_description: Described at the source as plate 5 of Gould's The Mammals of Australia, the listing that work introduction refers to Vol. I. Pls. 53 &amp; 54. It shows what is regarded as the most famous and reproduced image of the then extant species Thylacinus cynocephalus.
context_page_description: Henry Constantine Richter was an English zoological illustrator who produced a very large number of skillful coloured lithographs of birds and mammals, mainly for the scientific books of the renowned English 19th century ornithologist John Gould.
  Many of the original drawings used by Richter as the basis for his coloured lithographs were by Gould's wife, Elizabeth Coxen, produced before her death in 1841.
  Richter's reputation was overshadowed by that of his much-celebrated employer. Since it was not customary to acknowledge illustrators alongside authors in the titles of publications, his name was forgotten. But in 1978, his great ability and the extent of his contribution to Gould's work came to light, in the work of the researcher Christine E. Jackson.
context_section_description: Richter's earliest published bird illustrations were three plates in the book Genera of birds (1844–1849) by George Robert Gray. The plates depicted the Indian Barn Owl Strix javanica, the head and claws of two other owls, and a member of the pheasant and partridge family, Clapperton's spurfowl Pternistis clappertoni.  His illustrations attracted the favourable attention of ornithologists.
  In 1841 Richter was contacted by the zoologist John Gould, who urgently needed an illustrator, after the death of his wife Elizabeth Coxen (1804-1841), because he had committed to producing various parts of his lavish books on certain dates. The Gould-Richter working relationship lasted for forty years, until Gould died in 1881. Richter created about 3,000 lithographic plates and watercolours for Gould.  Other illustrators employed by Gould included Edward Lear, William Matthew Hart and Joseph Wolf, although it was Richter who produced the vast majority of the works during Gould's lifetime.
  Amongst his best known illustrations are those of the male and female thylacine, from Gould's Mammals of Australia (1845–63) - frequently copied since publication. For example, an Australian company Cascade Brewery used the image on the label for one of their brands of beer, in 1987. Previously, the Tasmanian Government had published a monochromatic reproduction of the same image, in 1934  and, earlier still, the author Louisa Anne Meredith also copied it for Tasmanian Friends and Foes (1881).
  In his will, John Gould wrote "I bequeath to my Artist H C Richter a legacy of £100 as a kind remembrance for the purchase of a [mourning] ring or any other article that he may prefer".  He seems to have been unconcerned about the impecunious state of his 60-year-old artist, although Richter had contributed so materially to his own prosperity for over four decades.
  After Gould's death Richter gained a small amount of work for Gray's Birds of Asia, and he prepared a plate for Sir Richard Owen's Memoirs on the extinct wingless birds of New Zealand (1878—1879 ).  Work already completed by him was used in Gould's books that were published posthumously, such as Birds of Asia, but new plates for the books were commissioned from William Hart.
caption: Tasmanian tiger Thylacinus cynocephalus, 1841, Plate 54 of Mammals of Australia, vol.I, J.Gould & H.C. Richter.  The thylacine became extinct in 1936
exif: {}