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Favourite Bird Artist (1 Viewer)

Hi Spar,

Andy was in the art mews on the stand next to mine at last years Falconry Fair and as far as I know he'll be there again next May, as will I. He missed a few fairs because of his connection with the Halcyon gallery but he's back now mostly selling LE prints (giclées).

He's a really nice guy, young, talented, don't it make ya sick ;)

Woody
 
Thanks for the link Woody, I agree Chris Rose has some nice work. I was also pleased to see Hilary Burn's work as I have one of her originals. The person I wish I could have met and followed in his footsteps was Gilbert White a real Naturalist.
 
In addition to some great names here.....
Tunnicliffe -

Michael Warren - probably my favourite. Great backgrounds and super-jizzy bids.
 
For the wall certainly Lars Jonsson but for the field guide....

Someone whose work I'd mention is Laurel Tucker
 
Have to agree about Eric Ennion - absolutely brilliant. By the way, I'm trying to compile a catalogue raisonne of all the etchings made by Winifred Austen, a superb bird artist who died in 1964. If anyone knows anything about her I'd be interested. She lived at Orford in Suffolk.
 
Hello and welcome to bird forum.....um, er....The Commodore.
Actually I have heard of Winifred Austen so that increases my list of known bird artists.
 
Harry Hussey said:
Hi all,
I would have to say Lars Jonsson,without a doubt(no disrespect intended to my fellow Irishmen Killian Mullarney and Dave Daly,both of whose work I admire!)Harry H

Looks like the UK is highly overrepresented in this thread. With a correspondingly high number of artists who are apparently known only rather locally. At least, many of the names mentioned I have never heard of before. So I start with one of my UK favorites: Alan Harris. I know him only as a FG illustrator, but there, I highly appreciate the way he draws as well as the arrangements on a page. Fortunately, I have been able to get several of his originals with four of them gracing walls in my home.

However, there are several other artists who are also among my favorites, Lars Jonsson being among them too. Other names are Killian Mullarney, and Dan Zetterström, then William Cooper, the Australian whos book on Birds of Paradise and Bowerbirds I particularly like.

Well, I could go on, but Audubon is definitely not among them. I don't like the artificial postures that are characteristic for his paintings.

Often, there are some paintings by a particular artist that I consider to be top and then there are others that I don't like at all. A case in point being Hillary Burn.


Robert
 
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Nice topic....

When it comes to contemporary artwork rather than straightlaced illustration, I am a HUGE fan of Sue Coleman, whose art I first saw in a store at Olympic NP, felt driven to buy every single postcard by her with a bird in it.
She is both a true to life technical marvelous animal painter who could easyly do fieldguide illustration as well as a great graphic artist to make simple abstract brand-like forms from wildlife and she mixes those skills in different ways. She is a native woman from british columbia so all her birds are western northamerican species.
Here is the postcard thumbnail page from her website:
http://www.suecoleman.ca/artcards.htm
My favorites are those where she gets not too clever with integrating the shapes in context but just places the abstracted birds with the realistic ones, her "Kingfisher" is one of my special favorites

When it comes to famous scientific bird illustrators long gone, while Audubon sure was neat for the purely artistic aspects, I feel drawn to even earlier history. I have a special soft spot for Conrad Gessner...
This might sound strange, for his still almost of medival illuminated bestiaries reminding style often is absolutely useless for field identification to us modern spoiled people at all, yet those plump forms have something strangely compelling... There are several Gessner plates shown at http://www.antiquariaatjunk.com/php/detail.php3?bnr=6823 .
Ulisse Aldrovandi makes me laugh, but not to mock him, his birds just have so antrophomorphic expressions at times and the stories are so wild. On the net you can see some work of him at http://panizzi.comune.re.it/mostre/zoo/aldrovandi.htm, but allas not his Ruff I have in a book on bird illustration, I think this Ruff is the most comical depiction of a male bird in display on earth! He also painted the barnacle goose how it fell out of the shell and the pelican at feeding they young with blood... I am captivated by those old half-scientific books.... and why they did assume those bird behaviors....

There where also famous old masters where birds are not the first thing to come to mind, that got otherwise very fancyful but depicted birds so they could get identified, that cought my special attention. I have tried to do a complete species list for Hyronimus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delight" for fun, but for some areas of the picture I have not found suitable enlargements yet. Some of the larger depicted birds in it are truely great and the only thing wrong about them is the scale when it comes to the tiny humans around them.... an other one I tried this with is the "Air" allegory of Giuseppe Archimboldo, a human head out of many life birds of which mostly only naturalistic heads are visible...
 
You've done some research there Botaurus.

I quite like Sue Colemans' work although for me personally I'd like to see the two styles seperated. I think that the 'native' art stands on its' own as does the naturalistic.

I agree that some of the 'old' works featuring birds are fascinating. I work not far from the British Museum in London and often used to visit just to see the illuminated manuscripts, they are astounding 'in the flesh'. The work can be so delicate that you wonder just how the artists managed to see what they were doing and the colours are wonderfully rich. There is also a fabulous collection of 'Celtic' objects where animals and birds are often depicted, definately worth a look if in London.

Woody
 
dennisalden01 said:
Fans of Chris Rose might like to know he has a website at ...
www.chrisrose-artist.co.uk

The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin mentioned on Chris' website is a good place to start if one wants to get to know a fair range of bird artists. Unlike this thread, their spectrum goes beyond just painting, it includes bird carving etc. They have a prestigious annual exhibit with a catalog that is not too expensive.

Chris Rose's plate of tits in flight is my favorite plate in the original BWP series. Unfortunately, it was already gone when I tried to buy the original.

Robert
 
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My favourites are Von Wright brothers Ferdinand, Magnus & Wilhelm - some of their works are shown here: http://koti.mbnet.fi/grave/Art.htm
-Below that webpage there is also a link to Kaj Stenvall's art. He is famous for his duck paintings.

Like Botaurus, I've also tried to identify Hieronymus Bosch's birds. Old artworks like his are interesting documents from "time before ornithology".
 
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Woody said:
You've done some research there Botaurus.

I quite like Sue Colemans' work although for me personally I'd like to see the two styles seperated. I think that the 'native' art stands on its' own as does the naturalistic.

I agree that some of the 'old' works featuring birds are fascinating. I work not far from the British Museum in London and often used to visit just to see the illuminated manuscripts, they are astounding 'in the flesh'. The work can be so delicate that you wonder just how the artists managed to see what they were doing and the colours are wonderfully rich. There is also a fabulous collection of 'Celtic' objects where animals and birds are often depicted, definately worth a look if in London.

Woody

Hi Woody,

finding any examples online was some research alright, as for the artists, whom I did not stumble over as originals or artstore prints one day, I learned from a nice but oversized book I have. "The Art of Bird Illustration" by Maureen Lambourne. ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...1830-8391223?v=glance&s=books#product-details ) This is my most favorite Cofetable book. I learned about Aldrovandi and a lot of others that where before Audubon and Gould or simply less known, tho' birder might recognize some names now and there from common english birdnames. Swainson, for example....
And there are also less known bird studies of pre-raphaelites in this book.... a must to see but nowhere on the internet alas... who would guess that John Ruskin could have as well specialized as a birdpainter. He was particulary good at glossy birds, peacock and european kingfisher... There is a study by him of a single feather that would make the popular Hallmark's backyard-bird artist Majorlein Bastin just grow very pale in comparison... (although her carefully marketed work is rather neat looking, of course, and leads so many people to get an interest into birds...).

I never was to the british islands yet and almost exclusively have studied bestiary illustrations by unnamed monks only as they are online as faximile...

But we also have very old bird-art closeby. It is just more substancial ;) ... In Bad Buchau the prehistoric Hallstadt polehouse village left their beautiful cormorant heads behind. Nobody knows what exactly they made them for, but religious reasons are assumed. Still it seems funny to imagine a village of people that lived mostly of fishing could have been that fascinated by cormorants of all birds! Right now we have a fishermen lobby in Baden-Wuertemberg that tries to get permission to kill as many cormorants as possible. Yet the bills of those ancient sculptures let little daubt what they are, the prehistoric fishermen honored cormorants with almost realistic busts... at http://www.federseemuseum.de/pics/buch1.jpg is a photograph of such a cormorant-head sculpure. Alas it is smal so the nice detail is not to see. The originals have also the size of real cormorants heads...

Sonja
 
Karwin said:
My favourites are Von Wright brothers Ferdinand, Magnus & Wilhelm - some of their works are shown here: http://koti.mbnet.fi/grave/Art.htm
-Below that webpage there is also a link to Kaj Stenvall's art. He is famous for his duck paintings.

Neat finnish painter. The one with the cartoon ducks is cute. The baroque barnyard and gamebird paintings remind me a lot of Melchior Hondecoeter, had finnland a lot of duch influence?

Karwin said:
Like Botaurus, I've also tried to identify Hieronymus Bosch's birds. Old artworks like his are interesting documents from "time before ornithology".

So have you a clue what the huge bird in the lower center of the garden (the sociable brown job that stuffs the berry in the human's mouth) is? My husband and me are of very different oppinions about it and could do with an unbiassed third opinion....

Sonja
 
There was a very vividly drawn black and white book on corvids by a west coast artist. I was impressed. All the birds had life in the Audubon manner. I forget his name!
 
I agree with an earlier post in that I believe the late Sir Peter Scott takes some beating in his depiction of wildfowl. He manages to get the atmosphere just right.
I also think that Scotsman Keith Brockie is a master with his pencil drawings of birds.

Brian
 
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