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Concert of the Birds. Frans Snyders, 1629–30. Oils on canvas, 98 cm × 137 cm (38 in × 54 in). Many pictures with this title were produced by northern artists during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They nearly all show an owl in the centre holding up a sheet of music surrounded by other birds, open-beaked, singing in chorus. Doubtless, they were inspired by the common sight in the countryside of an owl that dared to perch out in the open during daylight being mobbed by other smaller birds. Those shown here are all European with the exception of a South American parrot on the right and a Greater Bird of Paradise, with somewhat faded and dusty plumes, on the left. The score held by the owl seems to make no musical sense but that, perhaps, is of little consequence, since nearly all the birds shown have extremely discordant voices. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
The boy who would grow up to be Charles I, King of England, with a sword hilt in his left hand and a hat decorated with the skin of a bird of paradise behind him. Robert Peake, c.1610. Oils on canvas, 127cm × 85 cm (66 in × 34 in). Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
As the decades passed, more and more of these extraordinary skins began to appear. They all came from the great 1,600 km (1,000 mile)-long island of New Guinea, lying north of Australia, or from its outlying archipelagos. From there they were traded right along the Indonesian island chain and into the mainland of Southeast Asia. Some went even further into the Himalayas to become part of the regalia of the Kings of Nepal, which they still are. They even reached Britain. A certain amount of evidence suggests that bird of paradise plumes were found among the personal possessions of Henry VIII after his death. The evidence that the ill-fated young Scottish prince who would become Charles I of England also possessed them is beyond question. About the year 1610 he posed for his portrait standing beside a table upon which he has placed a sumptuous fur hat with, pinned to it by a brooch, the preserved skin of a bird of paradise complete with plumes.
Just under 30 years later, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) felt compelled to draw two specimens that, presumably, he had just acquired from a Dutch trading vessel, recently arrived from the East Indies. Rembrandt is known to have delighted in the rare and the curious, and such tastes were among the weaknesses that eventually led him into bankruptcy. When his goods were finally impounded and inventoried by bailiffs, a bird of paradise skin was listed among them.
The birds brought back by Magellan’s men had in life – as well as gauzy plumes – yellow heads, bibs of rippling iridescent green, and brown bodies. Grien’s drawing doesn’t show quite enough detail positively to establish that they were Greater Birds of Paradise, although there are good grounds for supposing that they were. But there are, in fact, half a dozen species that fit the description. Carl Linnaeus (1707–78), the great Swedish cataloguer of the natural world, invented a generic name for them, Paradisaea. To the biggest of them, he added, no doubt with his tongue in his cheek, the specific name – apoda, meaning ‘without feet’. A second species, the Lesser Bird (Paradisaea minor), also has golden plumes but is slightly smaller and lacks a small brown feathery cushion that the Greater Bird wears on his chest. The yellow plumes have a tendency to fade dramatically in preserved specimens, which is why many artists, using such specimens as reference, have shown them as white.
Two birds of paradise. Rembrandt van Rijn, c.1640. Pen and bistre with wash and white body colour, 18 cm × 15 cm (7 in × 6 in). The Louvre, Paris.
Three other species, the Red Bird (P. rubra), Count Raggi’s Bird (P. raggiana) and Goldie’s Bird (P. decora), are somewhat similar but have plumes that are not yellow but red. A sixth, the Emperor of Germany’s Bird (P. guilielmi), which is restricted to a small patch of mountains near the eastern tip of the island, has genuinely white plumes that are even more lace-like than those of its relatives. It is only the males of each species that develop these ravishing plumes. The females are comparatively drab – brown above, somewhat paler beneath and often quite difficult to tell apart.
Count Raggi’s Bird of Paradise – the first known illustration. Hand-coloured lithograph by Joseph Wolf and Joseph Smit from D. G. Elliot’s Monograph of the Paradiseidae (1873).
The Emperor of Germany’s Bird of Paradise, male and female. Watercolour by William Cooper, c.1976, 60 cm × 47 cm (24 in × 17 in).
Greater Bird of Paradise, male. Engraving after a watercolour by Jacques Barraband from François Levaillant’s Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux de Paradis (1801–06).
Goldie’s Bird of Paradise, male and immature male. Hand-coloured lithograph by William Hart and John Gould from Gould’s Birds of New Guinea (1875–88).
The Red Bird of Paradise. Engraved plate, printed in colours and finished by hand by Jean Baptiste Audebert, from Audebert and Vieillot’s Oiseaux Dorés ou a reflets Metalliques (1802).
Lesser Bird of Paradise, male and female. Watercolour by William Cooper, c.1976, 60 cm × 47 cm (24 in × 17 in).
Something of the wonder and curiosity that was inspired in naturalists by the arrival of bird specimens in Europe is captured in a painting by Ramsey Richard Reinagle (1775–1862). Painted around 1800, it shows a taxidermist examining the skin of a plumed bird of paradise newly arrived from foreign parts, with an Argus Pheasant lying on the table beside him. Some controversy exists over the identity of the man in the painting. An old inscription on the reverse identifies him as ‘Mr Thomson, animal and bird preserver to the Leverian and British Museums’, but during recent decades the picture has been listed as a portrait of the celebrated English ornithologist John Latham (1740–1837). That this identification is incorrect is shown by the presence of a Lyrebird specimen hanging on the rear wall. Lyrebirds did not arrive in England from Australia until around 1800, by which time Latham would have been 60 years old. The most likely interpretation of the painting is that it shows the otherwise unknown Mr Thomson inspecting the recent arrival and considering its suitability for proper stuffing.
The Greater and the Lesser Birds were both portrayed in one of the first of the spectacular folio books that deal with the birds of paradise. It was written by the French zoologist Francois Levaillant (1753–1824) and published in 1806. Its great distinction lies in its plates, which were drawn by one of the finest of all bird artists, Jacques Barraband (1767–1809), who had the most extraordinary ability to represent the many different textures that feathers may have. Until the last decades of the twentieth century, his ornithological reputation rested largely on these engraved hand-coloured plates. But they give little hint of Barraband’s true talent. The exquisite watercolours on which the engravings were based were almost entirely unknown. They had been acquired privately soon after they were painted and had remained in private possession, carefully preserved in albums that have protected them from fading ever since. It was only during the 1980s that the collection was split up and the full beauty and accuracy of the artist’s work was revealed to the world.
But Barraband, like all his predecessors and those that followed him in the next few decades, had to work from skins. Consequently,