Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935)

This watercolour was painted for Thorburn's publication Gamebirds and Wildfowl of Great Britian and Ireland. In this book Thorburn achieves his ambition as outlined in his introduction which states: 'My aim in this work has been to represent these birds grouped in their natural surroundings rather than to make scientific plates of the species.' (J. Southern, Thorburn's Landscape: The Major Natural History Paintings , London, 1981, p. 86).