Archibald thorburn artwork

Archibald thorburn signature
Archibald thorburn prints
Archibald Thorburn was born in Lasswade near Edinburgh on 31st May 1860 and was destined to become Britain's, and some would say the world's, greatest wildlife.

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Artist Archibald Thorburn

"Archibald Thorburn was born in 1860, near Edinburgh, the fifth son of the miniaturist Robert Thorburn ARA. He is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of birdlife of all time. It was perhaps from his father that Archibald Thorburn acquired the ability to create his minutely detailed paintings and he sketched from a very early age. He painted birds, animals and flowers but he specialised in the study of game birds, as he had a tremendous knowledge of ornithology. Thorburn received little formal artistic training but his career as a painter of birds began in 1883, when he completed 144 plates for WF Swaysland’s Familiar Wild Birds. However, his reputation was firmly established by his contribution to Lord Lilford’s magisterial survey Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Isles, which was published between 1885 and 1898. Thorburn’s work created such an impact because he was one of the first British wildlife artists to paint and sketch in the open and from life, rather than in a studio and from stuffed samples. Although he moved to London i

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Archibald Thorburn was born in Lasswade near Edinburgh on 31st May 1860 and was destined to become Britain’s, and some would say the world’s, greatest wildlife artist of all time. Even by the age of 30 in 1890 he was regarded as the best to have been seen in Britain, and that reputation has remained intact and unchallenged ever since.

He was the fifth son of Robert Thorburn (1818-1885) the leading miniaturist painter of the day and a great favourite of Queen Victoria, and the young Archibald received much of his early training from his father, whose insistence upon anatomical accuracy and careful attention to detail was to stand the young man in good stead throughout his life.

Even as a child Thorburn had shown exceptional artistic talent and by the age of 12 was already producing some exquisite little watercolours and pen and ink drawings that heralded much promise for the future.

One of his earliest and enduring loves was that of wild flowers and we see this discreetly though beautifully expressed in almost all his work. Whether a major composition or an identification book

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Artists Biography

British 1860 - 1935

Archibald Thorburn was born at Lasswade near Edinburgh on 31 May 1860. He was the fifth son of the miniaturist to Queen Victoria, Robert Thorburn.

From a very early age Archibald was intrigued by all forms of wildlife and by the time he was six or seven years old was already often to be found drawing and sketching twigs, leaves, and flowers from the garden at Viewfield House. It quickly became apparent that he had been fortunate enough to inherit his father’s artistic skills and by the age of twelve he was producing some beautiful little watercolour drawings and pen and ink studies that already showed exceptional talent and great promise of things to come.

For many of his contemporaries, Thorburn was the greatest natural history painter Britain had produced; “a giant who represented the culmination of a great nineteenth century tradition and showed the way forward to greater naturalism”. For more than fifty years, from his first published work in 1883 to his death in 1935, Thorburn was in constant demand both as a book illustrator and as