The Peter Harrison seabird artwork collection includes about 380 sketches and illustrations from 1983 to 2020. Primarily created for the book Seabirds: The New Identification Guide (2021), along with finished plates for publication, and illustrations from other publications, including Seabirds: An Identification Guide (1983) and its revised edition (1985) and Seabirds of the World: A Photographic Guide (1987). Additionally, it contains commissioned pieces and illustrations by Hans Larsson. Some artworks are paired with graphite sketches of the birds, intended to be displayed together to highlight Peter Harrison’s creative process.

Series I and II, a gift from Peter Harrison (“PH” hereinafter), include 261 artworks by PH, and 102 by Hans Larsson, all created for the book Seabirds: The New Identification Guide, published in 2021. There has been some electronic editing for published plates 1 through 239, especially for the Gulls plates; 52 plates are finished in the book; other species are paired differently than originally created.

These all being original artworks, there are many variations from what was originally created, compared to the electronically edited versions that were published in the book due to re-ordering of species, but mainly due to the moving target when considering subspecies being elevated to full species over the 15 years it took for the book to finally be published. Some of the PH artwork consists of numbered figures and drawings, all included in various book sections.

In Series III, Lysbeth Andreson’s gift consists of 25 pieces of original artwork by PH. From them, 18 pieces are commissioned works by PH, each consisting of a single seabird (of varying species and, in two cases, two birds of the same species), most with the bird in its natural setting; all but two of these 18 commissioned works come with a graphite sketch of the bird(s) depicted, meant to be displayed together, showing PH’s process when creating the bird. The other 7 pieces in this collection are from PH’s previous published works (1983, 1985, and 1987).