Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Woodcuts of British Birds

1925; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 116; Issue: 2922 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/116640c0

1476-4687

Lepidoptera: Biology and Taxonomy

MR. DAGLISH'S work may be commended not only to bird-lovers but also to art-lovers. He is a master of decorative style and of his craft of wood-cutting, and he knows his birds. Some of his portraits are triumphs —the red-backed shrike, for example, against bramble leaves; the reed bunting silhouetted upon a marvellous background of reed stems; the spotted flycatcher immobile on a laburnum perch; the long-eared owl among the most decorative of pine twigs; or the splendid blackcock busy with display. There is also the puffin, and the crested grebe, the pied wagtail and the wren (the wren in a tangle of every kind of spring flower), the jay and the jackdaw—each one a penetrating portrait and at the same time a real work of art. Not all are so successful—the bullfinch looks stuffed, the dipper and the heron rather scraggy, the stonechat is enlarged too much, and is in a false pose. But the best are as good as they can be, and all are interesting. The notes on the habits and appearance of the birds are, we take it, designed to obviate the necessity of going to the library and taking down heavy histories of birds, and they are more than ample for this purpose, and pleasantly written. Would that more artists were naturalists, more naturalists artists!