Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935)

A Greenland falcon on a rocky outcrop

Details

Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935)
A Greenland falcon on a rocky outcrop
signed and dated 'Archibald Thorburn 1913' (lower left)
pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour and touches of gum arabic on paper laid on board
15 x 11 in. (38.1 x 27.9 cm.)

Provenance

The Thorburn Museum; Sotheby's, London, 31 March 1993, lot 39, where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

J. Southern, Thorburn's Landscape, the Major Natural History Paintings, London, 1981, p. 98.
J. Southern, Thorburn's Birds and Mammals, Newton Abbott, 1986, p. 62.

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Clare Keiller

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Lot Essay

Thorburn's first drawings of the Greenland falcon were made in the aviaries of Lilford Hall, Northamptonshire, in the 1880s while he was working for Lord Lilford on his Birds of the British Isles, and it was a subject he returned to making sketches and studies both in Regent's Park Zoo, London, and in the wild.

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