BUTTERWORTH, Elizabeth (b. 1949, Artist), LOW, Rosemary (b. 1942, Author)

Parrots and Cockatoos

London and Uckfield: Fischer Fine Art Limited. Printed by Embassy Press Limited and Graham Wilkins, 1978-1979. Folio. 4to Text. Sheet: (20 x 15 inches). Plates: (9 x 7 1/2 inches). Text: (9 3/4 x 8 inches). One of 10 artist's proof copies for Edition B, which was published in an edition of 60. 20 fine aquatint engravings all signed, numbered, and dated in pencil in the lower margin by Butterworth. With title-page, edition statement, and list of plates. Booklet dated 1978 with descriptive text by Low: [1]-51 [1]. 52 pp. Introduction, Contents, 20 Descriptions of Bird Species.

Blue cloth four-flap folio album with silver lettering on front, laid-in bound book with brown paper wrappers printed black, prints on T. H. Saunders paper. The portfolio binding was made at the Royal College of Art, London

Twenty gorgeous, contemporary ornithological aquatints of Parrots, here as desirable artist's proofs from an early Butterworth and Low collaboration. The art historian Ian Dunlop has called Butterworth's Macaws as "without rival this century." [Lederer]

"Butterworth is a superb draughtsman whether she is describing the enamel-like surface of a bird's beak or the frayed edges of a bird's feather. She does so with consummate precision, making scrupulous observation the cornerstone of her art. Coupled with this is the purity and intensity of her color, which convinces us that this is exactly how these birds actually look, while also arousing a sense of wonderment at their spectacular and variegated plumage. This combination of incisive drawing and intensely saturated color makes her images leap from the page with a revelatory clarity and immediacy." [Verdi] "Butterworth is not the first British artist to succeed in capturing on paper the brilliant plumage of Macaw and other parrots, but with Edward Lear she must be considered one of the best. Certainly she is without rival in the twentieth century. Her success stems partly from intense powers of observation, and partly from an encyclopedic knowledge of her subject. She has bred Macaws, looked after them, fed them, and listened to their noisy antics from the first call of the morning to the last shriek at night. She has sketched them in the privacy of her back garden and in their natural state in the rain forests of South America. She has examined the skins of dead birds in natural history museums in London and New York, and she could tell you the number of feathers in a tail and the size of a beak to the nearest millimeter. It is this attention to detail combined with powers of observation that lifts her prints, watercolors, and drawings from plain description into the realms of high art. Although she belongs to a distinguished ornithological tradition in which British artists like John Gould and Archibald Thorburn have excelled, she seems closer to a watercolorist like Edward Lear who can be appreciated as an artist on his own level, and whose work appeals to collectors who do not know a Macaw from a Toucan. Her realism has surreal or super-real quality, and it is this aspect of her work which caught the eye of critics and curators on both sides of the Atlantic (and in Australia) and which has led to her work being exhibited alongside that by other contemporary artists in prestigious shows in New York, including a survey of contemporary art held at the Museum of Modern Art." [Dunlop] Low, who wrote the accompanying text, is a British aviculturist, ornithologist, conservationist, writer, and expert on parrots. Low started her career as a writer for the magazine, Cage and Aviary Birds. At that time, she and her husband had a collection of about 50 parrots. Following their separation she spent nearly eight years in the Canary Islands where she was curator of two major collections of parrots, first at Loro Parque on Tenerife and subsequently at Palmitos Park on Gran Canaria. She served as editor of the PsittaScene Magazine published by the World Parrot Trust until 2004. She has stated that her three main goals are: 1.) To widely publish information which will lead to a better standard of care for captive birds, 2.) To reduce the demand for wild-caught parrots, and 3.) To promote and assist with parrot conservation projects.

Dunlop, "Elizabeth Butterworth," 1993. Lederer, p. 206. Verdi, The Parrot in Art: From Dürer to Elizabeth Butterworth, p. 23.

Item #40188

Price: $2,250.00