
Before he became celebrated as the writer & illustrator of nonsense poetry, Edward Lear was a prolific painter of natural history subjects who earned near-universal praise for the accuracy, originality & elegant style of his animated depictions of birds & other wildlife. His best remembered scientific contribution is his magnificent monograph on parrots, the first English natural history book to focus on a single family of birds, which he began to publish when he was just 18. His depictions of ”species hitherto unfigured” of that gaudy group of birds dazzled the world & established Lear as the artist of choice for many of the leading ornithological publishers. In that golden age of colour-plate books, an era still celebrated for the great volumes created by John James Audubon & John Gould, Lear created some of the most spectacular natural history illustrations ever published. He did so without the benefit of any formal training in art, & with neither independent funding nor institutional support. The original watercolours for his scientific paintings
- many reproduced here for the first time
- confirm Lear`s place among the greatest natural history painters of all time.