Francis Lee Jaques: Artist of the Wilderness World, 1973 Vintage Book with Slipcase

Some books are meant to be read. Others are meant to be kept.

This is the definitive book on Francis Lee Jaques, one of America's great wildlife painters, written by his wife Florence Page Jaques with a foreword by Roger Tory Peterson. Inside are 64 of his paintings and museum dioramas in full color: pheasants in tall prairie grass, ducks lifting off still water, a boy resting with his plow horses beneath an enormous summer sky. Alongside them, 100 drawings in scratchboard, pen and ink, and pencil, plus a treasury of writings from the six books the couple made together.

Jaques painted the background dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and his work has a quiet, luminous stillness that feels right at home in a cabin, a study or beside a fireplace.

This copy comes in its original slipcase, with a painting of ducks on the front. Inside is a handwritten gift note: "To Bernice and Dick, with every good wish, from the Hawkins Family, Mar. 1978." A small piece of someone else's story, carried forward.

• Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1973
• Large cloth hardcover with gilt flying geese on the cover, in original slipcase
• 370 pages, 64 color plates and 100 drawings
• Condition: book in excellent condition; slipcase shows light wear; handwritten 1978 gift inscription inside

A beautiful keepsake to tuck into any Bill & Evelyn picnic basket for the nature lover in your life.

All sales final on vintage pieces. Condition details accurately described. Complimentary shipping included.