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Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935) Wildfowl at Sea - Mallard & Pintailsigned and dated 'A. Thorburn/ 1930' (lower left)watercolour on paper27 x 36.5cmProvenance:The Moorland Gallery, London by 1974, when acquired by the parents of the present ownerExhibited:London, The Moorland Gallery, Archibald Thorburn - Artist and Illustrator, 5th-21st December 1974, no.63A COLLECTION OF WATERCOLOURS (LOTS 201-204) BY ARCHIBALD THORBURN (1860-1935)Archibald Thorburn is widely regarded as the finest and most popular ornithological painter of his generation. By the age of 30, he had established a reputation for being the best in Britain and become renowned for his remarkably accurate depictions of wildlife, which he preferred to sketch out in the wild, and which were devoid of the sentimentality that dominated much naturalistic painting during this period. Born in Lasswade near Edinburgh, the fifth son of Robert Thorburn (1818-1885), portrait miniaturist to Queen Victoria, Thorburn received his early artistic training from his father and first exhibited at the Royal Academy at the age of 20. He was encouraged to study anatomy and sketch classical statuary in pursuit of scientific accuracy, and he briefly attended The St John’s Wood School of Art in London. Upon the death of his father in 1885, he sought the guidance of the German naturalist painter Joseph Wolf whose influence is evident across Thorburn’s work. Thorburn’s first major commission was the illustration of 144 colour plates for Walter Swaysland’s series Familiar Wild Birds which was produced in 1882 and became a huge success. However, it was not until Thorburn was commissioned to illustrate Lord Lilford’s extraordinarily wide-ranging publication Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Islands, for which he produced some 268 illustrations between 1885-98, that his reputation as a great painter of ornithological subject matter was assured. Following Thorburn’s move to London in 1885, he made regular sketching tours around Britain. In 1889, he visited the Forest of Gaick in Inverness-shire, which became the setting for almost all his depictions of ptarmigan and red deer. Thorburn's Scottish watercolours are considered some of his finest works and are known today for their ability to capture a sense of time and place as well as the changing seasons and weather. In 1902, Thorburn moved to High Leybourne, near Hascombe, Surrey, where he spent the rest of his life. There he settled into a routine of sketching on his morning walk and then working up these sketches into finished compositions back in his studio. Thorburn produced numerous illustrations for sporting and natural history books, including five of his own, and befriended eminent bird illustrators such as George Edward Lodge. In 1899, he designed the first Christmas card for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, of which he was elected a Vice-President in 1927.44.5 x 53.5cm framed. Not examined out of frame.
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