The Five Senses and the Four Elements – an early representation of a Greater Bird of Paradise, painted using an imported dried skin as a model. Though seemingly wingless and legless, it is propelling itself through the open window – perhaps returning to paradise! Jacques Linard, 1627. Oils on canvas, 103 cm × 150 cm (41 in × 60 in). Musée des Beaux-Arts, Algiers.
Paint and Plumes. Errol Fuller, 2012. Oils on panel, 46 cm × 66 cm (18 in × 26 in). Private collection.
Once these same feathers reached the western world their impact was immediate. Here it manifested itself through art and fantastical stories and myths, while princes and emperors displayed power and taste by acquiring the rarely imported specimens for their cabinets of curiosities and museums. The impact may indeed have taken a more veiled, symbolised, form, but it was still profound and eventually led to a manner of human adornment strangely parallel to that shown among New Guinea peoples. Through the nineteenth century and on into the first decades of the twentieth, it was the very height of fashion to add the most bizarre concoctions of feathers as appendages to finely crafted hats and clothes. But this time it wasn’t the males who were displaying their loveliness; it was the most fashionable of ladies!
In 1522 the first of many, many bird of paradise plumes arrived in Europe. Within just months they had attracted the attention of a celebrated artist, Hans Baldung Grien. His picture may be a comparatively flimsy affair, but it began a tradition among artists that continues to this day. The list of artists who have felt compelled to draw or paint birds of paradise is studded with some illustrious names: Brueghel, Rubens, Rembrandt, Millais. Then there are men who actually specialised in painting birds: Barraband, Wolf, Hart, Gould, Keulemans. And, of course, there are modern painters. Walter Weber produced a series of iconic images for The National Geographic Magazine during the early 1950s, William T. Cooper illustrated two major monographs on birds of paradise, and Raymond Ching is known throughout the world for his poetic and highly charged paintings.
Greater Bird of Paradise. Charles R. Knight. Oils on panel, size, date and whereabouts unknown. Copyright Rhoda Knight Kalt.
It is an inevitable consequence of a book that attempts to trace the history of these birds through their appearance in art, that the work of these few men will feature to what may seem a disproportionate degree. Many people have painted birds of paradise, but only a few have produced work that is worthy of particular attention, or has significantly added to the body of work that went before them. One reason for this (and it applies almost as much today as it did in past times) is that these birds are difficult to see. In days gone by it was virtually impossible, but even in the twenty-first century it is by no means easy. They rarely occur in zoos or aviaries, and a trip to New Guinea – daunting in itself – will not necessarily lead to seeing birds in ways that are helpful to the artist. Another reason is that these are extraordinarily difficult birds to capture in paint or pencil, even if good views are obtained. They do not always conform to the shapes that more familiar birds adopt, and making sense of the extravagant ornamental plumage – the metallic breast shields and throat gorgets, the axe-shaped feather fans, the lace-like plumes – is not an easy exercise.
Male Lesser Birds of Paradise with a female. Hand-coloured lithograph by William Hart and John Gould from Gould’s Birds of New Guinea (1875–88).
Eleven bird of paradise species from five distinct genera that lack the more extravagent features usually associated with the family.
(Top row, from left). Paradise Crow (Lycocorax pyrrhopterus); Glossy-mantled Manucode (Manucodia ater); Long-tailed Paradigalla (Paradigalla carunculata); Crinkle-collared Manucode (Manucodia chalybata). All images except Paradigalla hand-coloured lithographs by W. Hart from R. Bowdler Sharpe’s Monograph of the Paradiseidae (1891–98). Paradigalla, watercolour by Lilian Medland from Tom Iredale’s Birds of Paradise and Bower Birds (1950).
(Middle row, from left). Short-tailed Paradigalla (Paradigalla brevicauda), hand-coloured lithograph by H. Gronvold from Ibis (1912); Sickle-crested Bird of Paradise (Cnemophilus macgregorii); Curl-crested Manucode (Manucodia comrii), both images hand-coloured lithographs by W. Hart from R. Bowdler Sharpe’s Monograph of the Paradiseidae (1891–98).
(Bottom row, from left). Loria’s Bird of Paradise (Cnemophilus loriae); Wattle-billed Bird of Paradise (Loboparadisea sericea); Jobi Manucode (Manucodia jobiensis); Trumpet Bird (Manucodia keraudrenii). All images except Jobi Manucode hand-coloured lithographs by W. Hart from R. Bowdler Sharpe’s Monograph of the Paradiseidae (1891–98). Jobi Manucode, watercolour by Lilian Medland from Tom Iredale’s Birds of Paradise and Bower Birds (1950).
This book is not a complete cultural history of the birds of paradise and their effect on man. It is focused very much through western eyes. The matter of the birds’ influence on, and importance to, the peoples of New Guinea is only touched on: that is a subject for another book.
Nor does it include photographs, despite the fact that in recent years many wonderful images have been captured by camera. Photography, however, is beyond the scope of the present work, although it would make a splendid subject for another.
The book is certainly not intended as a complete monograph of the Paradiseidae, with each species described in detail. It is more in the nature of a tour through art and history with a good deal of ornithology thrown in. Its central idea is to showcase the breathtaking beauty of these birds and the enormous interest that surrounds them. As it is something of a historical ramble, the chapters are ordered according to the sequence in which the birds representing the various genera made their appearance in Europe.
According to generally accepted opinion, the species currently recognised are divided into sixteen genera, but only eleven of these genera are featured here in detail. The other five contain species – eleven of them – that are less visually spectacular and have histories that are, perhaps, less absorbing. They represent earlier stages in the evolutionary history of the bird of paradise family before the males abandoned their parental duties to devote themselves to the sexual displays that now dominate their lives and made them creatures of such extraordinary and extravagant beauty.
Greater Bird of Paradise (detail). Jacques Barraband, c.1802. Watercolour.
The First of the Family – the Plume Birds
Genus Paradisaea
The first specimens of birds of paradise to arrive in Europe looked very odd indeed. Several were unloaded from a small weather-beaten ship, The Victoria, that docked on 6 September 1522, in the little port of Sanlucar de Barrameda, 32 km (20 miles) north of Cadiz on the southwestern Atlantic coast of Spain, and close to Seville. That the shrivelled dried skins had once been birds was evident from the fact that they had beaks. But there was no skull in the skin of the head, the flattened feathered bodies were entirely empty, and there was no sign of wings or feet. Two strange wire-like quills projected from the tail, each about twice the length of the bird’s body. But the most wonderful part of their anatomy was their plumes. Thick golden bunches sprouted from either side of the body. These plume feathers