“Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue,…… he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting….” Amazon. …
I earlier talked about Elizabeth Gould, bird artist of the 19th century who may not have been given enough credit for her works. There are others, too, in recent years who are outstanding bird artists but not well known. One is Lars Jonsson (1952-), ornithologist and artist, who started painting birds when he was young; …
Mrs. Gould’s Sunbird of the Himalayas and the Gouldian Finch of Australia were named after Elizabeth Gould (1804-1841), bird artist of the early 19th century. Elizabeth Gould married John Gould, also a famous taxidermist and bird artist of that time. She designed, lithographed, and painted over 640 plates for birds of the Himalayas, Europe, Australia, …
I’ve always been an admirer of artists who paint realistic scenes. Whether watercolor, oil, acrylic, woodcut, or anything else, the skills involved are considerable and way beyond me. I took two short painting classes and rapidly realized how out of my league I was. Bird art, I think, is especially challenging because of the birds’ …
Before artists and naturalists knew much about ecology, they drew their pictures from specimens, not knowing much about them. So birds that inhabited different areas of the world, like a guinea fowl from Africa and parrots from South America were often pictured together. And the backgrounds of the pictures were landscapes of buildings, walls, castles, …
Birds: Ornithology and the Great Bird Artists, Continued. Read More »
My latest book, my ninth, just hit the bookshelves. Published by the University of Chicago press and Entitled Birds: Ornithology and the Great Bird Artists, it is about how the changes in ornithology affected art and what influence art had on ornithology from the 16th century to the present. Pretty much a coffee-table book full …
We can go back all the way to Aristotle in 300 or so B.C. who classified about 125 different birds on the basis of their habitat. This was a common way of classification for many years. Throughout the middle ages and the renaissance there were various schemes for classifying birds – habitat, beak, color, legs, …
We use bird names or references everyday in our lives. Here are a few lists I have come up with. Can you add to them? Birdy Sayings, Proverbs, and Descriptions A little bird told me. That’s for the birds. A bird’s-eye view. A lame-duck politician. Scarcer than hen’s teeth. Madder than a wet hen. The …
