Reference Books
Such are the nuggets of information and visual delights to be gleaned from this heavy (in poundage only), sumptuous, rigorous, and wide-ranging compilation. The Dictionary of Bird Artists has entries on 4,000 artists who depicted birds, with almost 400 examples of their work, 250 in color. An ex-librarian who has long studied bird art and kept records of where works are located, Christine E. Jackson is the author of seven books on bird illustration and painting, including biographies of English artists P.J. Selby and Sarah Stone. The criteria for inclusion in her awesome production: artists cannot be living and must have worked two-dimensionally on various substrates (excepting walls, mosaics, and ceramics), using pencil, pen or brush and ink, oils, or watercolors to convey their intellectual or emotional response to birds—wild birds, domesticated birds, hunted birds, live birds, dead birds. In the front matter, Jackson says the dictionary's most valuable feature may be that it encompasses different aspects of an artist's career. "Ornithologists," she says, "tend to think of bird book illustrators as doing nothing else, whereas they often were painters of pictures not only of birds but other animals, also plants. Similarly, art critics may fail to realise that some painters were also successful book illustrators." She also notes that critics often don't know that some of the great painters produced great works of bird art. Since general information on the great artists is easy to find elsewhere, Jackson briefly recounts their careers, concentrating on their bird art. For example, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, the great 18th-century painter, depicted birds, albeit dead ones, in some 30 of his still lifes. Although Jackson says he painted every bird “with a tremendous depth of tone, achieved by extreme delicacy of touch and honesty of vision,” she neglects to include one of his paintings among her color plates. Perhaps this was deliberate, because what she really seems to revel in is bringing to light the life and work of obscure artists. Although not wishing to let her book sink under the weight of too many "insignificant artists," she sees hers as a specialist dictionary that should include as much information as is available on the lesser known of those who chose birds as their subjects. In her entries, which as in any dictionary are alphabetically arranged, Jackson's writing style takes some getting used to, but it doesn't take long to appreciate her economy with words and, most of all, her insights into the artists' temperaments and her succinct, often blunt, assessments of their accomplishments. Some readers are bound to take issue with the latter, which often seem based on personal opinion rather than consensus, but Jackson's willingness to take a stand is a refreshing departure from the dry, sometimes soporific, objectivity of encyclopedic references. For instance, she says of John Gould, England's equivalent of America's John James Audubon, that "he never developed his own skills as an amateur artist." As for Audubon, she tells us that there have been better bird, botanical, and landscape painters, but "No-one . . . has ever recaptured the stunning combination he achieved on such a large scale and it is highly unlikely that anyone ever will do so again." No doubt it would please Roger Tory Peterson, who thought of himself primarily as an artist, that Jackson rightly devotes almost as much space to him as she does to Audubon. Jackson is guilty of omissions, however, and some are very frustrating. She describes Edouard Traviès as a "French bird artist of the top rank, one of the finest painters at work in the first half of the 19th century." But where is the proof? The dictionary reproduces none of his work. We learn that some critics consider the peregrine falcon by Louis Agassiz Fuertes in Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States to be "the finest bird portrait ever painted." Yet Jackson has chosen a watercolor of an emerald toucanet to represent Fuertes, a New York State native who was at his best when portraying birds of his homeland. For many of the artists, Jackson gives
locations of their works, recent sales (in local currency), and a
bibliography. Cross-references to the high-quality color plates, grouped at
the front of the book, come at the end of the entries, where applicable. Jackson
also provides an illustrated historical survey of bird art, an
appendix on the bird art of selected countries and regions, and a list of
bird artists by nationality. Perhaps it is asking too much to have a species index as well. —RW Copyright © 2000 Robert Winkler |
