I was perusing a digital copy of John Fannin’s Checklist of the birds of British Columbia (1891), when I ran across an illustration of a Merlin (well, it was often called a Pigeon Hawk, at that time).
The Merlin’s pose looked familiar. I had photographed a somewhat similar view a few years ago. So, I looked more closely at the description, which read:
Common east and west of Cascades, and ranging well up into the Rocky Mountain District, in which locality I have taken it in its most perfect plumage.
“Taken”? That word clearly had a different meaning for birders in the nineteenth century. Indeed, Fannin had shot the Merlin! The dead bird was then presented to an illustrator who posed it in a lifelike manner, and sketched it.
That is how it was done.
The renowned illustrator of birds in the United States, John James Audubon, would (as he said) harvest the birds he painted. His harvesting tool of choice was a rifle. In short: he shot them, then posed them, and then painted them. Curiously, he also then ate (or tried to eat) each of the birds he had harvested.
Audubon’s work predated photography and there were few other options open to him if he wished to limn birds. While Fannin’s work postdated photography, it probably wasn’t until a century later that camera technology would consistently outclass a rifle in the acquisition of good images of birds. We now have high-quality, long-focus, image-stabilized, lenses mounted on high-resolution cameras. Taking a bird in its most perfect plumage, now has a photographic meaning.
Here are two Merlins recorded in British Columbia (with only slightly different poses). On the left is a bird I photographed a few years ago. It was unaware of my presence. On the right is the one Fannin had taken. It too was unaware of Fannin’s presence, but that is because at the time of the illustration, it was dead.
Kill, pose, limn
I was perusing a digital copy of John Fannin’s Checklist of the birds of British Columbia (1891), when I ran across an illustration of a Merlin (well, it was often called a Pigeon Hawk, at that time).
The Merlin’s pose looked familiar. I had photographed a somewhat similar view a few years ago. So, I looked more closely at the description, which read:
“Taken”? That word clearly had a different meaning for birders in the nineteenth century. Indeed, Fannin had shot the Merlin! The dead bird was then presented to an illustrator who posed it in a lifelike manner, and sketched it.
That is how it was done.
The renowned illustrator of birds in the United States, John James Audubon, would (as he said) harvest the birds he painted. His harvesting tool of choice was a rifle. In short: he shot them, then posed them, and then painted them. Curiously, he also then ate (or tried to eat) each of the birds he had harvested.
Audubon’s work predated photography and there were few other options open to him if he wished to limn birds. While Fannin’s work postdated photography, it probably wasn’t until a century later that camera technology would consistently outclass a rifle in the acquisition of good images of birds. We now have high-quality, long-focus, image-stabilized, lenses mounted on high-resolution cameras. Taking a bird in its most perfect plumage, now has a photographic meaning.
Here are two Merlins recorded in British Columbia (with only slightly different poses). On the left is a bird I photographed a few years ago. It was unaware of my presence. On the right is the one Fannin had taken. It too was unaware of Fannin’s presence, but that is because at the time of the illustration, it was dead.
