Archibald thorburn signed prints

ARCHIBALD THORBURN

Lasswade, Edinburgh 1860 - 1935 Hascombe, Surrey

Archibald Thorburn, the finest bird painter which Britain has ever produced, was born on 31st May 1860 at Laaswade near Edinburgh. He was the fifth son of Robert Thorburn, a leading miniature painter of the day and a favourite of Queen Victoria. Archibald received much of his early training from his father, whose insistence upon anatomical accuracy and careful attention to detail stood him in good stead. He also studied with the animal painter Joseph Wolf.

Thorburn’s first published colour plate appeared in W F Swaysland’s Familiar Wild Birds (1883) and his last, posthumously, in Archer & Godman’s The Birds of British Somaliland and the Gulf of Aden (1927). In between he illustrated - and sometimes wrote - innumerable volumes. Thorburn’s remarkable technical abilities, combined with a freshness not see before, quickly established him as the principal illustrator for many leading sporting and natural history authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The monumental work Thorburn carried out for Lord Lilford between 1885-98, in which he completed some 268 watercolours for Coloured Figures of the Birds of the BritishIslands, establi

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