Lear started painting parrots in 1830 when he was 18 years old, and to get material for his book he studied live birds at the London Zoo and in private collections.

The latter included those of Edward Smith Stanley, later 13th Earl of Derby, who had a large menagerie at Knowsley Hall, and Benjamin Leadbeater, a taxidermist and trader in specimens.

It found him work with John Gould, Stanley and other leading contemporary naturalists, and the young Queen Victoria engaged him to help her with her painting technique.

Early scientific works on birds, such as those of Conrad Gessner, Ulisse Aldrovandi and Pierre Belon, relied for much of their content on the authority of the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and the teachings of the church,[2][3] and included much extraneous material relating to the species, such as proverbs, references in history and literature, or its use as an emblem.

[11] The commercial success of the Ornithology is unknown, but it was historically significant,[12] influencing writers including René Réaumur, Mathurin Jacques Brisson, Georges Cuvier and Carl Linnaeus in compiling their own works.

He was the librarian to the Royal College of Physicians with access to their collection of 8,000 books, and he used these, together with stuffed and live animals, to produce illustrated publications.

HMS Blossom, commanded by Captain Frederick W. Beechey, had a successful three-year voyage (1825–1828), visiting California, the Pitcairn Islands, Tahiti, and previously largely unknown parts of northwest North America.

Long delays by another contributor, the keeper of zoology at the British Museum, Edward Gray, meant that the book was more than ten years out of date when it was finally published in 1839, several other expeditions having taken place in the interim.

He met and became friends with John James Audubon, who had just published his 1827 double elephant-size The Birds of America, and this book may have inspired him to also choose a large format.

[18] Although other artists were not granted similar access,[f] Lear was introduced to the ZSL by the well-connected Mrs Wentworth, who was interested in both art and natural history.

[32][33] He also painted parrots owned by Stanley and Vigors,[18] and saw several species, including Baudin's black cockatoo, in the collection of Benjamin Leadbeater, a taxidermist and trader in specimens.

[18] Lear's illustrations were produced using lithography, in which artists copied their paintings onto a fine-textured limestone slab using a special waxy crayon.

Although this method was technically more difficult, drawing directly onto stone could give a livelier feel to the final illustration, and was favoured by some other contemporary bird artists such as John Gerrard Keulemans.

[36] Lear struggled with the costs of producing his book, despite erasing his drawings as soon as he had the necessary 175 copies, to reduce the expense of hiring the lithographic blocks.

[39][h] The sheer cost of producing his book meant that the final two parts were never completed and it was a financial failure, although Lear had anticipated this possibility, saying "Their publication was a speculation which — so far as it made me known & procured me employment in Zoological drawing — answered my expectations — but in matters of money occasioned me considerable loss.

"[36] The first two parts were published on 1 November 1830, and Lear, still only 18, was promptly nominated for membership of the Linnean Society by Vigors and the zoologists Thomas Bell and Edward Bennett.

[41] Now Lord Derby, he used the grounds of the ancestral home, Knowsley Hall, to create a private zoo in its 69 hectares (170 acres) estate, and he employed Lear to paint watercolours of many of the creatures in his menagerie.

[42][i] From about 1835, Lear became concerned about his eyesight, claiming "no birds under an ostrich should I soon be able to see to do", and increasingly concentrated on his nonsense works and landscape painting, although he may have contributed to the illustrations for Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle.

[46] Until then he was primarily a taxidermist, often working for the Zoological Society of London, with just one published book, his 1832 A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains, with backgrounds painted by Lear.

[52] James Prosek made his reputation through painting fish, but also incorporated nonsense elements in his work by creating imaginary birds in Lear's style, with annotations including alternative names, behavioural notes and the supposed locations of sightings.