Birds: Ornithology and the Great Bird Artists

Hardback

Main Details

Title Birds: Ornithology and the Great Bird Artists
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Dr Roger Lederer
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:224
Dimensions(mm): Height 283,Width 245
Category/GenreArt styles not defined by date
Animals and nature in art (still life, landscapes and seascapes, etc)
Birds
Birds, including cage birds, as pets
ISBN/Barcode 9780233006079
ClassificationsDewey:704.94328
Audience
General
Illustrations 200 illus

Publishing Details

Publisher Welbeck Publishing Group
Imprint Andre Deutsch Ltd
Publication Date 3 October 2019
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

In Birds, devout birder and ornithologist Roger J. Lederer celebrates the heyday of avian illustration in 40 artists' profiles, beginning with the work of Flemish painter Frans Snyders in the early 1600s and continuing through to contemporary artists like Elizabeth Buttersworth, famed for her portraits of macaws. Stretching its wings across time, taxa, geography, and artistic style - from the celebrated realism of American conservation icon John James Audubon, to Elizabeth Gould's nineteenth-century renderings of museum specimens from the Himalayas, to Swedish artist and ornithologist Lars Jonsson's ethereal watercolours - this book is a cornucopia of art and artists as diverse and beautiful as their subjects.

Author Biography

Dr Roger J. Lederer is an ornithologist and emeritus professor of biological sciences at California State University who has spent more than 40 years studying and writing about birds. He has written several books, including Latin for Bird Lovers, Beaks, Bones, and Bird Songs and Pacific Coast Bird Finder, as well as over 30 scientific papers. He has been a consultant on birds for the BBC, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, Fox TV, ABC News and Conde Nast and writes a blog at Ornithology.com.

Reviews

'[Birds] makes any bird painting aficionado yearn for more' * Wall Street Journal * 'Art history and the history of science intertwine in this beautiful tribute to the scientific illustration of birds' * American Scientist * 'Exquisite ... Ornithological gems such as Joseph Wolf's gorgeous Crimson-bellied Tragopan, Roger Tory Peterson's flock of flamingos in the Andes, and James Fenwick Lansdowne's rainbow-plumed Chinese pheasant reveal not only the sophistication of avian art, but the extravagant global variety of avian species' -- Laurence A. Marschall, Natural History 'People have been trying to depict birds for 40,000 years, but Lederer suggests that their efforts really took flight some four hundred years ago, in the work of Flemish artists such as Frans Snyders (Concert of Birds) and Carel Fabritius (The Goldfinch)' * Apollo * 'Beginning in the seventeenth century with the Flemish baroque period and continuing to the present, this book is a treasure trove of beautiful artwork and beautiful birds ... Full-color reproductions (many full page), mostly of paintings, lead readers through a history of art and artwork and of how the Western world has viewed birds since the 1600s. The artists are grouped mostly by time period but also by theme, as exploration and the scientific age changed the nature of illustration and spurred public interest in the environment and bird watching. Most of the artists are British or American, with a handful of Continental Europeans and artists working in the colonial realms of the time. Several women artists are included, from Lady Elizabeth Symonds Gwillim (1763-1807) to Elizabeth Butterworth (1949-) ... Recommended' * Choice * 'A sumptuous coffee table book, stunningly beautiful in its many full-page reproductions ... Here is a book that will put readers in a celebratory mood and, with the rustling of each page, stir a sense of wonder' * Enterprise-Record *