Briefly back in the spotlight - Archibald Thorburn, surely one of the greatest artist-ornithologists of all time?

Wow - what illustrious thrush-family company for the blackbirds!

                                                              

NOWADAYS there are so many excellently-illustrated field guides that the art of Scottish bird enthusiast Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935) tends to be forgotten.

Yet it was he who was at the forefront of portraying birds in a natural way as opposed to the stylised mode of counterparts such as, say, the American, John James Audubon.

Earlier this month, a copy of Thorburn's  masterpiece, British Birds  - published  in four volumes between 1915 and 1918 -  came up for sale at the Gloucestershire premises of auctioneers Dominic Winter.

Bidding was brisk until the hammer fell at £700 - hardly  an excessive price to pay for such a superb set of books containing no fewer than 80 mounted colour plates, each with a tissue guard, and depicting a total of more than 400 species.