Bird painting - Christine E Jackson

This is the second part of a five-volume series. This book presents a representative selection of colour pictures of birds painted during the 18th century. It portrays the artists' increasing sensitivity to nature. A detailed text accompanies the pictures and reveals the growth in the popularity of watercolour as a medium for painting birds.;In the 18th century, several artists continued to produce bird paintings in the same style and composition of the Old Masters. When a new sensitivity to nature became universal, naturalists recorded, named and illustrated species with increasing skills. Old myths were replaced by observation and evidence. Exotic birds were being discovered in the newly-explored countries of North America, India and, at the end of the century, Australia. This age of discovery was also a period when the potential of watercolour painting was developed and proved to be the perfect medium for depicting birds. In bird art, as in so many other aspects of 18th century life, this was an age of sense and sensitivity.