1982 study of Rock Buntings - rarely seen in Britain - attracted plenty of interest at Salisbury art auction

Rock Buntings - the preferred habitat is dry mountainous area

                                                                      

WHAT prompted artist Mary Fedden OBE to choose Rock Buntings for this expressive painting she completed in 1982?

Bristol-born Fedden, who died aged 96  in 2012, was not especially noted as a bird artist.

Nor was 1982 one of the handful of years in which the species has been recorded in Britain.

So there must have been some other factor which brought Rock Buntings - a partially migratory inhabitant of Asia and Central Europe  - to her attention.

The question is prompted by the fact that this delightful study, measuring  22.4cm x 16.7cm,  went under the  hammer at the Woolley and Wallis art auction in Salisbury earlier this month.

Including the buyer's premium, it sold for £5,040, which was in line with the pre-sale estimate of £4,000 and £6,000.

A close friend of former TV news presenter Anna Ford, Fedden had a varied art career which included stage designs for Saddlers Wells and murals for the World War Two effort and then  for Charing Cross Hospital.

For most of her married life she lived on the banks of the River Thames in London where she shared a flat with Julian Trevelyan, also an artist. He died in 1988.

The first British records of Rock Buntings were the two netted by birdcatchers, in late October 1902, near Shoreham in Sussex, with another that was seen at Faversham, Kent, in mid-February 1905.

Subsequent records include birds seen in Pembrokeshire (August 1958), Spurn (February-March 1965), Bardsey (June, 1967) and Bolton Abbey (May 2011).                                                                         

Mary Fedden - a long and colourful life