A Nepalese Black-Headed Nun in the Branch of a Tree

Archibald Thorburn painted British birds with an ornithologist’s accuracy and a landscape painter’s feel for weather. A grouse crouches in heather, a golden eagle stands on a crag, and the feathers are exact without the picture turning stiff. Most of his work was in watercolour, and he preferred to paint by natural light alone. He was born in Lasswade near Edinburgh, the son of Robert Thorburn, a portrait miniaturist to Queen Victoria. He trained briefly in London and learned a great deal from the wildlife painter Joseph Wolf. His 268 plates for Lord Lilford’s Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Isles made his name, and his own books, British Birds and British Mammals, followed. He also designed Christmas cards for the RSPB for more than thirty years and served as its vice president. Look at how he places each bird in its real habitat, often in the Scottish Highlands where he sketched.