The last of the great Victorian nature painters, Archibald Thorburn’s bird pictures marked a high point of the art in the years before and during the First World War. Born in Scotland, Thorburn received an initial training in art before seeking out the guidance of the preeminent natural history artist of the mid nineteenth century, Joseph Wolf (1820-99). Initially derivative of the styles of his predecessors, principally seen in his illustrations for Walter Swaysland’s series Familiar Wild Birds, Thorburn quickly developed his own style.
After illness prevented the bird painter John Gerrard Keulemans (1842-1912) from completing his commission for Lord Lilford’s Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Islands (see RCINs 1057075-81), Thorburn was hired to complete the project. Thorburn made over half of the illustrations in the work and his skill in depicting various species accurately was swiftly recognised. Rather than placing birds central on the page with a vague representation of their habitat as a background, he instead included birds within their environment. Drawing his pictures from life, Thorburn also added a new vigour to an art style that had become rather staid. As a result, the bird pictures became very popular with Victorian and Edwardian audiences and Thorburn found fame beyond natural history, exhibiting several of his watercolours at the Royal Academy.
Such was his fame that despite the decline in book publishing during the First World War, Thorburn was able to achieve success with his magnum opus, British Birds, published between 1915 and 1918. The books concerned every species of bird then believed to be resident in Britain and Ireland. It was illustrated with 82 colour plates, each featuring between two and five birds. This technique, rather than depicting each bird in isolation, both cut costs for printers and offered birders an easy comparison between the different species found within a particular habitat.