George Edwards: The Bedell and his Birds

Frontispiece, A Natural History of Uncommon Birds (1743) Volume 1

Edwards was a painstaking recorder of nature rather than a gifted artist. His aim was to ‘achieve a natural and accurate portrayal’ which was not always easy, especially when drawing from stuffed birds. He would make sketches of each specimen using ‘as many turns and attitudes as I could invent’ to achieve a life-like picture.

The Long-Tail'd Green Huming Bird

Edwards was particularly troubled by his ignorance of a bird’s natural habitat. He took ‘counsel of some painters… to decorate the birds with airy grounds’. A lichen-covered bough was his favourite device on which to perch smaller birds. Waterfowl he depicted by water and a sketched hint of vegetation and romantic buildings was a general theme for the background. The plates often included more than one specimen and often butterflies and insects as Edwards did not like ‘too great void spaces’ on the print.

The Gerbua

In addition to the descriptions of birds Edwards also wrote on his techniques for paintings and etching. He claimed to have invented two methods of representation. Firstly displaying winged insects by painting the body and legs, then gumming the actual wings into place. Secondly he showed the profile of a bird by plucking each feather and gumming them in sequence on to a paper-covered board.

The Man of War Bird and the Chinese fish

Colouring was vital to accurate portrayal and Edwards hand-coloured at least a dozen copies of all the etchings he published and personally supervised the colouring of others. He deposited a complete set of etchings in the Royal College of Physicians Library: ‘carefully and exactly coloured from the original drawings which may serve as a standard to refer to in case the plates should outlive me’.