[Young of Lesser Tern]

Book Description

[circa 1819]. Watercolour and guoache. Signed by Mitford lower left. 7 5/8 x 8 3/4 inches. A fine original watercolour study for one of the subjects on plate LXXXIX of the Water-birds volume of Selby's Illustrations of British Ornithology: "the finest and largest book about British birds" (Jackson). Prideaux John Selby was a versatile gentleman naturalist, born in Alnwick, Northumberland, he inherited Twizell House and its estate in 1804, and throughout his life did not neglect his duties as a landowner, magistrate, High Sheriff, and then Deputy Lieutenant of Northumberland. He married Lewis Tabitha Mitford, the daughter of Bertram Mitford of Mitford Castle, Northumberland, in 1810, and by 1817 had a happy marriage, three daughters, and a house that had become a sort of upmarket 'staging-post' for naturalists heading North and South along the nearby Great North Road. Visitors were to include Audubon, Sir William Jardine (one of Selby's closest friends), John Gould, William Yarrell, H.E.Strickland, to name but a few. Selby's great work Illustrations of British Ornithology (Edinburgh: 1821-1834) was the most obvious result of his life-long passion for natural history in general and ornithology in particular, and Christine Jackson notes, in her introduction to the catalogue of the now dispersed Bradley Martin collection of Selby watercolours, that, besides "collecting and preserving birds, Selby had observed them in the field, making careful notes of their habitat and habits. At his leisure, he also sensitively colored drawings of them. With this accumulation of practical knowledge, specimens, and some drawings, Selby embarked in 1819 on an ambitious project to publish [a work containing] the most up-to-date, life-size illustrations of British birds." Jackson continues: the "beautiful watercolors of birds ... date across the years 1819 to 1823... [Selby's] inherent talent had no doubt been encouraged at school, but beyond that, he appears not to have received instruction in the art of drawing or using watercolors. In December 1826 he was in Edinburgh with Sir William Jardine, at the rooms where [John James] Audubon was showing his paintings of the birds to be used for The Birds of America. Selby and Jardine must have been greatly impressed by Audubon's life-size, animated, and life-like bird paintings. They were both intelligent men, quick to appreciate talent and quality when they saw it. Jardine was then only twenty-six years of age, as yet unpublished... and unknown to contemporary naturalists. That he was willing to take instruction from Audubon in the methods and techniques of painting birds is understandable. Selby, having completed his first volume of Illustrations of British Ornithology including all the land birds ... was preparing the third part (of eleven) depicting water birds. It was indicative of Selby's modest character that he too was eager to learn from Audubon. Of his two pupils Audubon commented: 'They work very well indeed, although I perceived at once that Mr.Selby was more enthusiastic and worked therefore faster than Sir W. but this one finished closely as he went, so that on the whole it was difficult to give either the Supremacy' [Audubon manuscript journal for 1826]..." On 8 June 1989, in Part III of the auction of the famed H. Bradley Martin library, all of the known surviving original drawings by Selby for his Illustrations of British Ornithology were sold at auction. Each of the watercolours had been bound by Selby in four folio volumes and were subsequently sold after his death in 1885. Eventually obtained by Martin, the volumes were disbound, with each watercolour sold separately at the auction of his collection. This watercolour is one of only 55 from that collection in the hand of Selby's brother-in-law Captain Robert Mitford (1781-1870). Mitford, Jackson writes, "was of the greatest assistance to him in preparing watercolor paintings and, unlike the other contributors, he etched some plates."

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